The Black Tower

[sawyl]

Not being able to find the third book in sequence in my local bookstores, I've jumped ahead in my survey of PD James to The Black Tower, the fifth Dalgliesh novel.

Recovering from a life threatening illness, Adam Dalgiesh has decided to respond to a summons from an old friend, Father Michael Badderley. But on arrival at Toynton Grange, the eccentric nursing home where Badderley worked, he learns that the elderly priest recently died of heart failure. Deciding to use the time to recover his strength, Dalgliesh sets about sorting through his legacy — Father Michael's books.

As Dalgliesh finds himself sucked into the affairs of the home, he discovers that all is far from well. Why did Father Michael want his advice? Who sent the poison-pen letters that seem to have done the rounds of staff and patients? Did Victor Holroyd commit suicide by rolling his wheel chair off the cliff or was he pushed? But this time around, Dalgliesh is far from a willing detective. Determined to reprioritise his life after his brush with mortality he has decided to resign from the police and branch out in a new direction, but he finds his attempts to persuade himself of his own disinterest unconvincing.

The Black Tower is classic James. Set in a semi-monastic community — the home was established by a man who believes that a trip to Lourdes miraculously cured his MS — on a relatively self-contained headline populated by oddballs, it is has a certain amount in common with both Death in Holy Orders and The Lighthouse. But unlike the latter, Dalgliesh is forced to contend with the murderer on his own, unassisted by colleagues, in poor health, beset by doubts about his abilities and suddenly uncertain about his course in life — something that contrasts with the confident, if remote, Dalgliesh of later books.