The mystery started with a lot of promise. And as I've already said it was complex and well structured. There were a few suspicious deaths and one positive murder, so it wasn't easy to guess the criminal, nor it was any easier to fathom a connection between the deaths. My suspicions, even though I felt illogical at the time, proved to be true in the end. Now I used the word "illogical", and that is how I still feel, for there is no other word to describe the absurdity of it all. The motive behind the crimes was simply ridiculous! It was a heavy blow to the carefully constructed structure of the murder-mystery which at the weight of it staggered and collapsed.

The narrative proceeds predictably, with a series of interviews interspersed with chapters that afford the principals opportunities to interact when they are away from prying officials. The priests are the central figures. Avuncular Father Martin, eighty years old, former warden, and senior member of the quartet, is confidant to many. Father Sebastian, present head of the seminary, is a gruff cleric, jealous of his position and prerogatives. Father Peregrine, priest librarian, is a quiet, cherubic man with a possessive attitude toward his domain. Father John, who was convicted of sexual offenses with boys and served a prison term, shares quarters with his elderly sister. Among the others are George Gregory, part-time teacher and full-time resident; Clive Stannard, grandson of a college benefactor, who comes for weekends ostensibly to do research; Roger Yarwood, at the college for a rest cure following the break-up of his marriage; and Eric Surtees, a handyman who, at St. Anselm’s, has found the tranquillity he always had sought. To these men, the college is a haven, fulfilling personal, professional, and spiritual needs. On one hand, each has a vested interest in the continuation of the school, but at the same time, the priests would gain financially by the demise of the school. Whether the Archdeacon in this regard indeed represents a threat to their well-being is open to question. Father John, however, received a long prison sentence for his crimes largely due to the Archdeacon’s zeal; and when Crampton’s wife committed suicide, Yarwood, then a police sergeant, raised questions of irregularities at the inquest; further, Raphael Arbuthnot, senior ordinand and the last descendant of St. Anselm’s founder, despises the Archdeacon for having hounded Father John into prison. I have read previous reviewers who mention the paedophile priest. This storyline was only mentioned 3 times in the entire book and was in no way part of the story so do not let you put you off.To add to the message, the fellow priest who pushed for exposure and prosecution is demonised: 'a priest hounding a fellow-priest into prison? It would be disgraceful if anyone did it. Coming from him it's abominable. And Father John [the paedophile] - the gentlest, the kindest of men.' Er, no, Ms James, this isn't 'hounding' but reporting a crime that the church would rather have covered up. What is 'disgraceful' and 'abominable' are the ideas that the paedophile should be left to continue his predations among children. Character development suffers, particularly on the part of the hero, commander Adam Dalgliesh. The reader comes to be more enamored with the (rather perverse) sub-characters than with the protagonist.

Listened to the audio version of this; read the book soon after it was published in 2001. I've gone through all the Adam Dalgliesh mysteries and remembered this as one of the best. But, now, on a second round, I was distracted by other things in the story.

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It appears to have been a natural one, though in this case the reader already knows for certain that it was not. The college might stand in defiant symbolic isolation between the sea and the acres of unpopulated headland, but the life within its walls was intense, tightly controlled, claustrophobic.

Dalgliesh is not the only unwanted guest who appears that weekend: among the others is the very Archdeacon (the position helpfully defined as "a kind of Rottweiler of the Church") who is pushing for the closure of the college, Reverend Crampton (who also caused one of the resident Fathers considerable grief years earlier), as well as a local police Inspector, Yarwood, who in turn caused the Archdeacon considerable grief years earlier (essentially accusing him of having murdered his first wife). I can’t help but think of Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach. In that poem the sea of faith is a withdrawing roar revealing the shingles of the world, a metaphor for loss of faith in the modern world. Here the sea is the world eroding the foundations on which St Anselm’s sits, with it’s demise, and thus that of “clever faith”, inevitable. The first is that of Ronald Treeves, a student at the college -- and the adopted son of wealthy industrialist Sir Alfred Treeves.

Book Summary

Making his eleventh appearance, Scotland Yard Inspector Adam Dalgliesh is planning a vacation visit to St. Anselm’s Theological College on England’s East Anglia coast, where he spent time as a boy; prior to leaving London, he is told to look into the recent death of a St. Anselm ordinand (seminarian), the son of an important industrialist. Though the coroner ruled it an accident, Scotland Yard has received an anonymous letter that raises the specter of foul play. Dalgliesh—an introspective poet-intellectual who epitomizes the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) operative—finds the St. Anselm community upset by the young man’s death. They are also wary of the imminent arrival of Archdeacon Crampton, a trustee who wants the small seminary to be closed because, despite its endowment, it is not self-sufficient and requires too much financial support from the Church. The priests and others who work and reside at St. Anselm’s have many reasons for thwarting Crampton’s intent, though under its founding charter, when the school property (including valuable art holdings) is sold, the four resident priests will share the bounty. Even before Dalgliesh gets to the school, James has built the framework of a typical mystery novel: a restricted community, anxiety-filled characters, complex personal relationships, a suspicious death, an isolated setting, the prospect of inherited wealth as a possible motive. Her novels normally are longer than most mysteries, concerned as she is with theme as well as event, but the leisurely pace enhances the narrative and makes her characters more three-dimensional and realistic. To tell the truth just having Adam Dalgleish as the main character makes it a good read for me. I love the fact that he is intelligent, calm, organised, kind and that he thinks before he acts. He is the English version of Armand Gamache. You can always tell the characters you can trust in the story because they are the ones who like him the most.

Nowhere in the first section does James seem merely to be going through the motions, but in the later ones she falters very occasionally, giving in to trite and unnecessary predictability in stray sentences and explanations: I usually lose interest half way through. I wanted to see this drama after buying the book by PD James and because i never got round to reading it. I decided to watch the drama. The apparent suicide, the certified natural death, the brutal murder -- there was a cord which connected them.

Media Reviews

There is no shortage of possible suspects, or motives, for Ronald's death. But before Dalgliesh even arrives on the scene, another death occurs - a death everyone else considers natural and expected. Dalgliesh wonders otherwise. As the body count continues to rise, so too the means, motive and opportunity of almost the entire community of St. Anselms. Dalgliesh and his team steadily work to reveal the killer or killers before someone else falls victim. Long-time widower Dalgliesh is furthered hampered in the investigation by his unexpected feelings for a visiting guest lecturer, Emma Lavenham. Will the possibility of love turn out to be a blessing or curse for Dalgliesh? Among the issues of concern is what will happen to the college after its closing: the will of the founder, Miss Agnes Arbuthnot, anticipates the possibility, leaving the property to be divided between "any direct descendants of her father, provided such descendants were legitimate in English law and communicant members of the Church of England". When Dalgliesh is about to leave for St. Anselm’s, he recalls in detail his earlier visits, including one at age fourteen when he fell in love with a fifteen-year-old girl, Sadie, for whom he wrote a poem (which he recites to himself). The occasion is so vivid in his memory that he remembers the specific date of their innocent tryst. James also describes his journey from London to Ballard’s Mere, some four hundred miles, at great length, with precise descriptions of the countryside: