This is relevant to the present situation in that it shows that Dalgliesh has a prodigious memory, that he is a keen observer with a penchant for details, and that he has a sensibility that facilitates his development of relationships, perhaps even with potential suspects. James’s detective is not at all the two-dimensional sleuth of most mysteries, a caricature composed of a bundle of idiosyncrasies. He is a self-effacing professional, secure about his position and happy to have aides make crucial, enlightening discoveries. When asked if he is happy, widower Dalgliesh replies: “I have health, a job I enjoy; enough food, comfort, occasional luxuries if I feel the need of them, my poetry. Given the state of three-quarters of the world’s poor, wouldn’t you say that unhappiness would be a perverse indulgence?” It would be interesting if James deliberately chose the name St. Anselm’s to reflect Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God. This argument was successfully undermined by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason, and it’s formal errors are revealed by modern predicate logic. (As a Christian myself I think there are other arguments that are sound ...) In this story, Dalgliesh is asked to go to a seminary near Norfolk to look into a previously closed death. A young ordinand had been found dead at the base of a cliff. The death is deemed to be death by accident. The young man's father wants Scotland Yard to investigate. Since Dalgliesh is about to go to the area on vacation so he agrees to look into the case. It also turns out that as a child, his father being a parson, that Dalgliesh spent time at St Anselms and it becomes somewhat a visit into his past.

Commander Adam Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard has been asked by Sir Alred Treeves to take a closer look into the suspicious death of his adopted son Ronald, who suffocated under the cliffs near St. Anselms by an avalanche of sand. Was it an accident, suicide, or murder? Dalgliesh, the son of a rector, has former ties to the school - as a young teen, he spent several happy summer holidays there among the priests and ordinands. I remembered the setting & the characters Father Martin, Father Sebastian and Eric from my first read. Book takes place at an Anglo-Catholic theological college, Saint Anselm's, on the isolated, wild and windy East Anglican coast. Setting was 5 star & most of the characters were very well drawn. This time around I was bothered though by the very sympathetic portrayal of one of the characters, Father John, a convicted pedophile. There are some hints that perhaps he wasn't guilty at all, certainly there's explanations that he was only accused of fondling, but somehow, today, this is hard to justify. I assume James is trying to portray moral ambiguity, the grayness of guilt in her characters. 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).The novel was adapted for television in 2003 as a two-part BBC mini-series, and also released on DVD. 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.

The setting is St. Anselm's, an elite theological college at an isolated location on the coast of Suffolk. 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. This is one of the best mysteries I've seen in a while, perhaps because it reaches beyond being a simple whodunit and becomes a complex, personal drama.Commander Adam Dalgliesh, who had spent three summers at St. Anselm's in his youth, offers to poke around. 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.

Secondly the entire motive for the murderer doesn't make a grain of sense. This person had no regard for the person he was benefiting by committing the murders as he made perfectly clear on a number of occasions. That being so, why murder anyone? As those who've read the Dalgliesh series know, James winds her characters, their personal thoughts, and their psychologies with the plot of the murder-mystery to create a complete story. It is her style and there is no exception here. Unfortunately, except for a few of the clergy, I felt absolutely nothing for the others; no interest at all. They all felt wooden to me. And it was the same for Dalgliesh's team. I found both inspectors Kate Miskin and Piers Tarrant tiresome. Even Dalgliesh himself wasn't in his best element, although he was comparatively the most humane.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. As in Original Sin (1995) and A Certain Justice (1997), James’s achievement is not to pin down individual guilt, but to show the place of crime and guilt and sin in a whole culture.

I think Tara’s summary, in line with others, that the weaknesses of this book are the motive for murder and excusing of sexual abuse, is exactly right. From the award-winning master of literary crime fiction, a classic work rich in tense drama and psychological insight.However I had two major issues with the book. Firstly there is a indefensible defence of a paedophile whose life has been ruined by the vendetta a certain character had against him, with the intention of getting him convicted - which apparently involved finding dubious characters willing to perjure themselves in court and lie that he had seriously assaulted them. However, the fact that he had in reality "only" fondled choirboys is presented as relatively minor and something that should not have counted against him.