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An Unsuitable Job for a Woman
Without warning, a final-year Cambridge student leaves and takes a job as a gardener. Eighteen days later he's found hanging by the neck in his cottage. Cordelia Gray, sole proprietor of the Pryde Detective Agency, uncovers long-suppressed family secrets.
2 pages, Audio CD
Published May 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 7, 2009
Cordelia's first appearance. While I as not surprise by the murderer, the plot is still enjoyably unpredictable.You can't not to like this strong-willed lady detective.
December 22, 2019
Solid and well-paced BBC audio play of James' first Cordelia Gray. Just the ticket for a cold grey day!
December 27, 2023
I love nosy women mysteries!
December 9, 2025
"could this really be suicide? A word dancing at the back of Cordelia's mind, an amorphous half-formed jangle of letters, came suddenly into focus and, for the first time, spelt out clearly the blood-stained word. Murder. "
....
"She was seeing Cambridge at its loveliest. The sky was an infinity of blue from whose pellucid depths the sun shone in unclouded but gentle radiance. The trees in the college gardens and the avenues leading to the Backs, as yet untouched by the heaviness of high summer, lifted their green tracery against stone and river and sky. Punts shot and curtsied under the bridges, scattering the gaudy water fowl, and by the rise of the new Garret Hostel bridge the willows trailed their pale, laden boughs in the darker green of the Cam."
....
"New Hall, with its Byzantine air, its sunken court and its shining domed hall like a peeled orange, reminded Cordelia of a harem; admittedly one owned by a sultan with liberal views and an odd predilection for clever girls, but a harem nonetheless. The college was surely too distractingly pretty to be conducive to serious study. She wasn't sure, either, whether she approved of the obtrusive femininity of its white brick, the mannered prettiness of the shallow pools where the goldfish slipped like blood-red shadows between the water lilies, its artfully planted saplings. She concentrated on her criticism of the building, it helped to prevent her being intimidated."
....
"She was seeing Cambridge at its loveliest. The sky was an infinity of blue from whose pellucid depths the sun shone in unclouded but gentle radiance. The trees in the college gardens and the avenues leading to the Backs, as yet untouched by the heaviness of high summer, lifted their green tracery against stone and river and sky. Punts shot and curtsied under the bridges, scattering the gaudy water fowl, and by the rise of the new Garret Hostel bridge the willows trailed their pale, laden boughs in the darker green of the Cam."
....
"New Hall, with its Byzantine air, its sunken court and its shining domed hall like a peeled orange, reminded Cordelia of a harem; admittedly one owned by a sultan with liberal views and an odd predilection for clever girls, but a harem nonetheless. The college was surely too distractingly pretty to be conducive to serious study. She wasn't sure, either, whether she approved of the obtrusive femininity of its white brick, the mannered prettiness of the shallow pools where the goldfish slipped like blood-red shadows between the water lilies, its artfully planted saplings. She concentrated on her criticism of the building, it helped to prevent her being intimidated."
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews