I love the psychological insights professed by the author's characters.

(1986)Very well written mystery about a man who appears to have committed suicide after killing a bum in a church vestry. Turns into a family saga when a brother-in-law turns out to have killed him after being embarrased by him.(PW)In her latest Commander Adam Dalgliesh detective novel, James subtly deepens the complexities of his personality, making him an ever more credible protagonist. When two bodies are discovered with their throats slashed in a London church, Dalgleish is called upon to solve the case. One victim is Sir Paul Berowne, former Minister of the Crown; the other is a tramp accustomed to sleeping in the church vestibule. It seems that these deaths may be tied to those of two young women who have recently been employed in the Berowne household. Dalgleish feels an unusual empathy in this case; he had known Berowne and sensed several parallels in their lives. This sense of compassion is one of the things that distinguishes James's novels. In delving into what she calls "the fascination of character," she makes each actor in the drama memorable. The characters here read Trollope and Philip Larkin; they are knowledgeable about architecture and art. Yet James's civilized digressions do not detract from the suspense of the plot. She does not employ horrific details for shock effect, but her step-by-step description of procedural details, particularly those of forensic medicine, totally immerse readers in the investigation.

A classic murder mystery novel--the story follows Commander Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard as he investigates the murder of a wealthy and unpopular aristocrat, Sir Paul Berowne. With a complex web of suspects and motives, Dalgliesh must navigate the intricacies of upper-class British society to unravel the truth behind the murder. As the investigation progresses, secrets and tensions begin to surface, leading to a thrilling and unexpected conclusion. With her distinctive prose and intricate plotting, PD James delivers a well-written tale of murder and intrigue. ( )

The Baronet and the Tramp
Review of the Vintage Canada paperback (2011) of the Faber & Faber hardcover original (1986)

No one joins the police without getting some enjoyment out of exercising power. No one joins the murder squad who hasn't a taste for death. The danger begins when the pleasure becomes an end in itself. That's when it's time to think about another job. - Adam Dalgliesh makes observations during A Taste for Death

Detective Commander* Adam Dalgliesh is the head of a new elite squad at Scotland Yard CID with his old assistant Chief Inspector John Massingham and new assistant Inspector Kate Miskin. The squad has been formed to handle especially high profile cases and they are called into service when ex-Minister of the Crown Sir Paul Berowne and a street tramp are both found dead in a church vestry in a poor London parish.

Berowne had resigned his minister's post apparently on the basis of a religious experience, which was also concurrent with a poison pen letter campaign hinting at his possible involvement in the deaths of two young women who had been in employ in his household and in the accidental death of his first wife. He is spending time at the church and avoiding his family: a domineering mother, a flashy 2nd wife, a freeloading brother-in-law and several servants. There is the suspicion of murder-suicide due to the death of the tramp and the use of Berowne's own cutthroat razor in both deaths, found beside him. Dalgliesh thinks it is double murder though and the suspects mount as the squad traces all of Berowne's history and that of the family.

A Taste for Death is quite a long book for P.D. James at 624 pages in this 2011 edition. Earlier books had been mostly in the 300 to 400 page range. She uses the extra space to go even further in depth for her background characterizations of the suspects, but also about Dalgliesh's assistants Massingham and Miskin who envy each other, but do not really know the pressures the other one is dealing with in their personal lives. We learn very little new about Dalgliesh himself though, except that he apparently has not written poetry for several years now and does not expect to do so again.

Despite its length this was still a reasonably quick read for me over several days, the final 150 pages or so when the wrong 'un becomes apparent lead to a increasingly suspenseful and fateful climax.

See book cover at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fa/ATasteForDeath.jpg
Front cover of the original Faber & Faber hardcover edition (1986). Image sourced from Wikipedia.

I read A Taste for Death as part of my continuing 2022 binge re-read of the P.D. James novels, which I am enjoying immensely. I started the re-reads when I recently discovered my 1980's P.D. James Sphere Books paperbacks while clearing a storage locker. To keep to the order of the series I realized that I had to newly source A Taste for Death, which I had not previously read. I was able to find a nice copy of the 2011 Vintage Canada paperback.

Trivia and Links
* In Book 1, Adam Dalgliesh was a Detective Chief Inspector, in Books 2 to 4 he is a Detective Superintendent and in Books 5 to 14 he is a Detective Commander.

A Taste for Death was adapted for television in 1988 as part of the long running Dalgliesh TV-series for Anglia Television/ITV (1983-1998) starring actor Roy Marsden as Commander Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard. You can watch the 6 episodes of the 1988 adaptation starting with Episode 1 on YouTube here. With a 5 hour running time, this adaptation is very faithful to the original novel.

See photograph at https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZTUxMWFjZDEtMjRiNS00M2EzLWJhZTAtNDU5MDcy...
Actor Bertie Carvel as Commander Adam Dalgliesh in the 2021 TV adaptation of "A Taste for Death". Image sourced from IMDb.

The new Acorn TV-series reboot Dalgliesh (2021-?) starring Bertie Carver as Adam Dalgliesh adapted A Taste for Death as Episodes 5 & 6 of Season 1. Season 1 adapted Books 4, 5 & 7. With a 3 hour running time, this adaptation edits out a considerable portion of the novel and the final confrontation takes place in a different location and with some different characters. ( )

Once upon a time [WARNING: Name Drop Alert] I had occasion to meet Baroness PD James (and I have a signed first edition to show for it!) and it was hard to believe that this diminutive elderly lady with the twinkle in her eye could write prose like this: "Do you remember the time when you thought you couldn't boil an egg?" Whoops! Wrong book. Let me try again: "There were two of them, and she knew instantly, and with absolute certainty, that they were dead. The room was a shambles. Their throats had been cut and they lay like butchered animals in a waste of blood. Instinctively she thrust Darren behind her. But she was too late. He, too, had seen. He didn’t scream but she felt him tremble and he made a small, pathetic groan, like an angry puppy. She pushed him back into the passage, closed the door, and leaned against it. She was aware of a desperate coldness, of the tumultuous thudding of her heart. It seemed to have swollen in her chest, huge and hot, and its painful drumming shook her frail body as if to burst it apart. And the smell, which at first had been tentative, elusive, no more than an alien tincture on the air, now seemed to seep into the passage with the strong effluvium of death."
The 'shambles' is the case that Inspector Adam Dalgliesh, Scotland Yard's finest, must unravel. And, considering the social milieu Dalgliesh travels in (he is a lauded published poet), and that one victim is a knighted Tory politician (the other man is Harry, 'only' a tramp), the investigation immediately is drawn into the highest realm of the British upper class. Now, this is the point where I have discovered that the study of a novel, with a teacher or a reading group (in this case The Guardian's August Book Club) you may learn precepts that otherwise would be missed. For example, I have enjoyed many of James procedurals, never noticing how her stories are drenched in Tory politics and class bias. From The Guardian: "James’s 1986 [A Taste for Death] is considered one of her finest, and contains many of her classic tropes: Anglicanism, religious doubt, troubled Tories and involved discussions of what makes good and bad coffee. There are fantastic descriptions of London, from high church architecture to the mud and slick of dingy canal towpaths, via grace and favor apartments and rundown social housing." But, then there's this: the lives and loves of the privileged are lovingly detailed, but the lowly "others" are dismissed in a perfunctory fashion. And teachers or social workers or domestics have their aspirations condescended to. Nonetheless, this crime procedural was first rate and, politics and class aside, I will concede that it is a lovingly drawn portrait of Margaret Thatcher's England peopled with characters who resonate with ugly foibles one loves to hate. ( )

The elderly Miss Wharton, accompanied by Darren, a child of uncertain origins, find the bodies in a church. The bodies are of a tramp, well known in the area, and of Sir Paul Berowne, a Minister of the Crown.

Because of Berowne's rank, Scotland Yard sends out Commander Adam Dalgliesh, who chooses Inspector Kate Miskin as his second. Dalgliesh had had occasion to meet Berowne not long before, when the Minister had called him in to show him an anonymous letter suggesting that Berowne was responsible for the deaths of one or more women.

It is a complex web that Dalgliesh and Miskin enter, with the usual complaints from high up to answer and the murders to solve, with skill as well as delicacy. There is a significant role for young Darren to play, as his observational skills are perhaps too good to overlook. ( )

Suspense and thrills. ( )

St. Matthew's Church in Paddington is not a particularly notable church. At least, not until two men are found murdered in the vestry. One, Harry Mack, is a tramp who had been accustomed to sleeping in the church doorway. The other, Sir Paul Berowne, is an MP who recently resigned his cabinet post. What could they have had in common, and who could have wanted to kill them?

The writing style of this mystery may have you thinking about the classic Queens of Crime, but the setting is modern (at least, modern to when the book was written, 1986), and the murders are satisfyingly gory without being excessive. Dalgliesh isn't quite a "gentleman sleuth", but he is a poet by hobby and is therefore a cut above your typical commander of Scotland Yard. Plenty of space is given, too, to Inspector Kate Miskin, one of few women in the police force and therefore facing extra challenges in doing her job (not only to do her job well, but to be taken seriously as she does that job well, and to balance her work and life in a way that won't have people thinking she isn't up to the job). Miskin's challenges still feel relevant in 2019.

This is the sort of book that deserves a good weekend or a few evenings' worth of reading. It's a bit heavy in terms of writing style, but by the end it became impossible to put down. I had been teetering on the edge of a 3- or 3.5-star review, but the ending was just so breathtaking that I had to go with 4 stars.

I read this out of series order -- it's the 7th book in the series -- but that's just how I roll. And enough information is provided about everyone's relationships with each other within the police force that I did not feel lost in any way. I'm looking forward to reading more about Dalgliesh and his colleagues, and to going back to the ones I read a while ago and have forgotten. ( )

Classic British police procedural style murder mystery. Good, brooding stuff. ( )

I have loved everything I have read by P.D. James. I like the way we learn about the private lives of the main characters. It makes them seem like real people. ( )

Two men found dead in a church: murder and suicide, or double murder? One a politician, the other a tramp. Because this is a PD James novel we know it is murder, but we don’t know why or who by. This novel differs from the preceding six in this series because of its length [656 pages], compared with its predecessor ‘Death of an Expert Witness’ [400 pages]. For this we get extra plot twist and turns, more detail about the potential suspects, more internal monologues, and more of the literary depth which characterizes the later Dalgliesh novels. Some readers will appreciate the extra detail, others may prefer a quicker moving, shorter, crime novel.
The story is book-ended by the meeting and subsequent relationship between Miss Emily Wharton and 10-year old Darren Wilkes. They find the bodies and after that their very human story is lost in the swirl of police procedure and suspicion, accusations and alibis.
Commander Adam Dalgliesh heads up a new squad to solve serious crimes which need sensitive handling. This murder of Sir Paul Berowne, a government minister, is the squad’s first case. On Dalgliesh’s team is John Massingham, familiar from earlier novels, and newcomer Kate Miskin. Miskin’s storyline is a welcome female perspective in a male-dominated job [this book was first published in 1986].
This was the first PD James novel I read, I still have the original paperback. Certainly I have a clear memory of a man called Berowne murdered in a church. It was the beginning of a fondness for Adam Dalgliesh and I have read every one of his series since.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/ ( )

This is a mystery with an unknown victim. Other than a flashback to a brief meeting from AD's point of view, we never meet the murdered man. Since the whole plot and murder motive revolve around some supposed religious epiphany he may have had, and we never see him before or after the change which this experience is said to bring about, the story lacks conviction and plausibility. I had to reread the early chapters twice: what religious experience? Did he actually have a religious experience? Are Anglican religious experiences really that low-key? Is such a nebulous, undefined religious experience sufficient to make a man change his whole life, and if so, to what? If we ever learn that Berowne actually had plans (join a L'Arche community? serve in a leprosy mission?) I missed that part. And the more we (through AD) learn about the man, the less the whole thing makes sense. Meanwhile, Kate is introduced, does a lot of thinking to which we are privy, and makes herself a believable, sympathetic and three-dimensional character. I could have enjoyed a book about Kate and her appalling grandmother. Or a book about young Darren. Just leave out that boring murder and its nebulous victim. ( )

A very unconvincing story that drags on and on. Only the subplot involving Kate is touching. some other minor characters are nicely thought out (darren, the mistress) but others are just a nuisance (the priest, the murderer, the widow). definitely not PD at her best. ( )

good characters with real depth. ( )

Competently written murder mystery with PD James' popular detectives Adam Dalgliesh and Kate Miskin. Easy to read and moderately 'not put downable'.
My copy was sourced from the Gold Coast Libraries Disposal shop - 'Fill a bag for $10'.
Read between Feb 10 and 14 (Flinders Island trip), 2013. ( )

BBC Radio 4 full cast dramatisation of the novel, presented on 2 CDs. Two men are discovered with their throats cut in the vestry of St Matthews Church. One is a local tramp, the other a former government minister. The political implications make the murder investigation a job for Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team.

It's a good adaptation played by an excellent cast, and I enjoyed listening to it. But squeezing a long book down into 2 hours 20 minutes means that a lot of material has had to be cut, and I think the adaptation does suffer for it. It's still very enjoyable, but I think might feel a bit thin to someone who wasn't already familiar with the book. ( )

London in 1986: The largely-irrelevant Anglican church has been corrupted by social do-gooding on one side and a Romish infatuation with miracles on the other; the left behave like 1950s Stalinists in a John Le Carré novel; the decadent upper classes are motivated only by self-interest, whilst the Conservative Party stands alone as a bastion of honour and common-sense. If it were anyone other than P.D. James, you would take it for an elaborate satire, but I have a horrible feeling that she actually sees the world like this.

An impressive detective story, but deeply unattractive in its politics. ( )

I decided to read all of the Adam Daigliesh mysteries in one fell swoop and am glad I did. First, they are classic British mysteries all well-deserving of the respect P.D. James has earned for them and all are a good read. However, what is interesting is to watch the author develop her style from the early ones to the later ones. And, in fact, A Shroud for a Nightingale and The Black Tower (the fourth and fifth in the series) is where she crosses the divide. The later books have much more character development -- both for the players and the detectives -- make Dalgleish more rounded and are generally much more than a good mystery yarn -- they're fine novels that happen to be mysteries. The first three books (Cover Her Face, A Mind to Murder, Unnatural Causes) are just that much more simplistic. But read any or all -- she's a great writer and they are definitely worth the time. ( )

P. D. James has never written a bad book, but I think this is one of her best. ( )

One of her best, Dagliesh is newly appointed head of the special murder squad and is called on to investigate what appears to be a murder suicide in a church vestry in London. Great characterisation - oddly I think PD James must've just been reading Dorothy Sayer's Gaudy night as there are two turns of phrase that come direct from DLS - a face "stripped for action" in a mirror and another I can't remember!
Update: I still like this book but I do find there's a chip of ice in the heard of all of James's characters (both heroes and villiains) and the character of the murdered man is particularly opaque. She doesn't seem to like the upper classes and doesn't understand the lower classes and the the effect of this keeps you at arms length from the story. The denouement, somewhat reminiscent of the denouement in Gaudy Night, only more violent,is the only time real human emotions seem to break through chilly self control of the remainder of the book. ( )

Another cracker ( )

I tried to read this some years but could not, but having read it fully now it seems one of James' most accomplished books in characterisation, plot and sense of place, with none of the slight straining after effect that is evident in her latest works. The settings are for the most part much less pleasant than in many of her books, and the characters also mostly unsympathetic; but there is a completeness about the little world she has drawn

Audiobook. Great fun. Always enjoy PD James--cannot be critical when I read her. ( )

Another great Adam Dalgleigh mystery. Well plotted, wonderful character development, and elegant prose. ( )

In this novel we really get to know Kate Miskin and John Massingham, his two subordinate detectives. Kate and Massingham are rivals for promotion & the esteem of Dalgliesh, who they refer to as AD. They both have some family trouble (elderly parents or in Kate’s case, grand parent), which makes them more similar than either of them realize. I have seen most or this entire one on Mystery, so I remember some of the plot, although not the killer. The killer is revealed fairly early on and so the bulk of the story is showing how AD will get the evidence.

The victim isn’t very deeply drawn though. We see a man suddenly have a religious epiphany of sorts and he is killed inside the church he is spending the night in. Berowne seems to have it made – inherited a title and a wife from his deceased older brother. He has a mistress who appears to love him for who he is not what he has. He has a respectable job as a Minister of Parliament. So why did he go over the edge on the religious angle? It’s never fully explained.

His mother is drawn pretty well – she’s been there & done everything so nothing surprises her anymore and she says virtually everything that comes into her head. She is snobby, rude and insulting and doesn’t care. I almost liked her.

The wife, Barbara is as childish as a woman can be as an adult. Virtually everything is done for her as it always has been. It reinforces the belief that beautiful women are of diminished capacity to do anything for themselves.

Mattie, the indentured servant is a shrew with mental problems. I remember her from the PBS show quite vividly. Rail thin with a kind of stringy musculature and awful curly hair. She covers for the killer because she believes him to love her and cannot see he was just using her, only that time it was for an alibi.

Dominic, despised by his father for his physical abnormalities, loved by Barbara in some weird pet-like way, kills Berowne because he found out that Berowne was going to sell the huge house they lived in and divorce Barbara. Plus Paul humiliated him in front of a woman. But, Dominic didn’t know that Ursula had been to the church before him and had the will changed to leave everything to Barbara’s unborn son, not to Barbara directly. And that he left a very distinctive button behind that tied him to the crime scene. In the end he sealed his fate by kidnapping Kate’s grandmother (and eventually killing her which was really a blessing) and nearly murdering the church priest.

The weird side story about Darren and Miss Wharton was kind of funny. In the end though, they didn’t stay together as friends – she realized that he had outgrown her and saw her true, ridiculous self. ( )