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An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P.D. James ★★★★Cordelia Gray, age 22, shows up to work one morning to find her boss, Bernie Pryde, dead by suicide; he has chosen this over suffering through cancer. While she’s handling this sorrow and the details, she is hired to find out why Cambridge dropout Mark Callendar has killed himself. The man who hires her is his father, and it doesn’t take Cordelia long to realize that murder is the far more likely cause of Mark’s death.
The search Cordelia undertakes reveals surprises, twists, elements of danger and all that you’d want in a well written murder/suspense/mystery/thriller novel. True, it doesn’t rush through things at a breakneck speed designed to give one nightmares after staying up all night reading it, but it doesn’t need to do so. The writing is at once simple and well done; moving along at a clip that does speed up at times, naturally, or it would merely be a cozy mystery. Since it is written in the 1970s there are no cell phones or electronic tracking means, which is such a refreshing change. I like Cordelia and am strongly considering reading the next one.
Karin wrote: "An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P.D. James ★★★★Cordelia Gray, age 22, shows up to work one morning to find her boss, Bernie Pryde, dead by suicide; he has chosen this over suffering through canc..."
I read P.D. James's Dagliesh books years ago and liked them better than the average mystery and watched the Cordelia Gray Mystery series on PBS years ago. Perhaps I should try reading one of the Gray books.
Denizen wrote: "Karin wrote: "An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P.D. James ★★★★Cordelia Gray, age 22, shows up to work one morning to find her boss, Bernie Pryde, dead by suicide; he has chosen this over sufferin..."
It might be worth a try. I don't like a lot of mystery series, but often end up reading them for some challenge or another.
★★★★.5
Major Pettigrew, sixty-eight and a widower, has just learned that his younger brother has died of a heart attack when Mrs. Ali, a Pakistani widow and shop owner, rings the doorbell because he has forgotten to leave the newspaper money for the paper boy. When he becomes rather faint, she holds him up, comes in to make him some tea and thus begins a friendship between the two as they find they have common interests, such as literature. His relationship to his sister-in-law is somewhat strained, and questions arise as to the intentions of his late brother over an antique rifle that was supposed to be given to Major Pettigrew. But over all of this, the developing friendship, and the possibility that it just might end up being more, envelopes the loneliness of Pettigrew
What makes this story a 4.5 rounded up to a 5 is the writing, the pacing, the endearing qualities of Major Pettigrew and the fact that the secondary characters are developed, albeit interpreted through the Major’s eyes. At once we can see what he thinks of his son but also get a glimpse of how is son probably thinks even if, naturally, we can’t really know any more than we can really know what anyone else thinks. Simonson, who hails from England, captures the area and the attitudes of people in towns such as Pettigrew’s, well.