A Taste for Death

Another PD James novel, this time it's A Taste for Death, from 1986. The title, for what it's worth, comes from a snatch of A.E. Housman.

When the body of politician Sir Paul Berowne is found lying next to that of a tramp in the vestry of a rundown church, Adam Dalgliesh and his new team find themselves assigned to the case. Investigating the victim's background, they learn about a religious experience that appears to have caused Sir Paul to abandon his political career, an earlier pair of deaths associated with his with household, and a troubled family life.

The great strength of A Taste for Death seems to me to the be the character of Sir Paul. As the investigation unfolds, Berowne comes across as a profound absence. He doesn't value the things that others expect him to value: his political career, his grand family home, and his beautiful but shallow wife. Having decided, after an unexplained religious experience, to abandon his unhappy life, he dies with his new ambitions unfulfilled. All of which gives rise to a strong sense of a person who, despite appearing to have everything, is empty, hollow, and extremely unhappy.

The rest of the novel is generally pretty satisfying. The locations, from the Berownes' aristocratic household, presided over by the dowager Lady Ursula, to the brooding neo-gothic church where the bodies are found, with its faithless priest and dwindling number of parishioners, are, as ever, beautifully and precisely drawn.

Also good are the relationships between the detectives and the investigation. Dalgliesh, who knew and liked Berowne, finds himself greatly troubled by the death and has to fight to maintain his professional detachment. Kate Miskin, newly assigned to work with Dalgliesh, struggles to keep on the right side of the chauvinistic John Massingham whilst also trying to cope with a personal crisis involving her grandmother, her only remaining family.