P. D. James (1920–2014)

So much telling. So much missing & so many questions. An abrupt ending. I kept going along, hoping to get more clues so I could figure what the deal was with everyone (Sojourners, council members, Quietus, the different Five Fishes, Jasper, etc.) but was left with nothing. Whatever the most opposite of concise is, this is. Superficial treatment of a fascinating premise.

New word = accidie.

I've no idea how it can be made into a faithful movie. Most of the first half, the world-building could be summed up during opening credits, then we could meet the rest of the characters and have the childhood flashbacks in about a quarter hour each (at most), then the chase scene and the climax, but in the movie the climax would be longer and more dramatic and triumphant. But hey, I don't watch many movies so what do I know.… (more)

Re-read, I think (from ages ago). Takes aaaaaages to get going (I guess a 100-page section entitled "foreword to murder" warns you of this). Like James has decided that the way to add psychological depth to a whodunnit is to describe exhaustively what is going on with every single character. There's things to like in this and things not to: the descriptions are sometimes informed by a somewhat unpleasant sensibility.

As a whodunnit this is very cleverly constructed, with lots of red herrings, no withholding of information but withholding of interpretation (turns out the police have more of a notion than the reader is told until late on).

The solution does seem to rely on some improbable coincidences, but that's par for the course. And it does gather speed very nicely towards the end.

James' conservatism and social illiberalism is less prominent here than elsewhere, but it is certainly there.… (more)