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The Black Tower
Unavailable
The Black Tower
Unavailable
The Black Tower
Audiobook13 hours

The Black Tower

Written by P.D. James

Narrated by Penelope Dellaporta

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

The fifth mystery in the acclaimed and bestselling Adam Dalgliesh series by "the reigning mistress of murder"(Time), P.D. James.
Just recovered from a grave illness, Commander Adam Dalgliesh is called to the bedside of an elderly priest. When Dalgliesh arrives, Father Baddeley is dead. Is it merely his own brush with mortality that causes Dalgliesh to sense the shadow of death about to fall once more?
"Splendid, macabre"-London Sunday Telegraph
"THE BLACK TOWER is a masterpiece."-London Sunday Times
LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 3, 2009
ISBN9781415961452
Unavailable
The Black Tower
Author

P.D. James

P. D. James (1920–2014) was born in Oxford in 1920. She worked in the National Health Service and the Home Office From 1949 to 1968, in both the Police Department and Criminal Policy Department. All that experience was used in her novels. She won awards for crime writing in Britain, America, Italy, and Scandinavia, including the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award and the National Arts Club Medal of Honour for Literature. She received honorary degrees from seven British universities, was awarded an OBE in 1983 and was created a life peer in 1991.

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Reviews for The Black Tower

Rating: 3.6490282008639308 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

463 ratings21 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It was a pleasant hearing, although I would not classify this Dalgliesh book as excellent. Dalgliesh is in a recovery phase and visits an old friend at his request. Unfortunately, he is late because his friend died a few days ago. It is striking that Dalgliesh is always a tad too late in this book. He realizes that there is something bad at work, but there are dead before he finds out anything.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I tried but I couldn't get into this book. I kept plugging along with it (I hate hot reading a book all the way through) and have to admit I skipped many chapters but it just did not keep me interested. When I got to the ending..... Yeah..... Still couldn't get into it...
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    One of the earlier Dalgliesh mysteries, but after reading the most recent (and possibly final) story, I appreciate it more. All the characters have some depth to them (okay, not quite all -- the handy-man, the female wheelchair patients, and the nurses are not too deep, but they have enough personality or personal history to give them enough character to fulfill their role in the story). The scenes are all, for the most part, relevant to the plot. That was a complaint of the final mystery -- too many tangents, particularly with the Commander's team.

    Several deaths at special home for people with MS type disorders, all seemingly accidental or natural and unrelated actually are all by the hand of the most normal person in the group, who was trying to cover up his heroin smuggling operation. How Dalgliesh knew it was certainly heroin as opposed to some other drug, I'm not sure, but whatever. A good classic who-dunit type mystery with a bit of the PDJames theological hints to boot.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Not my favourite PD James.I thought the book was rather slow and a bit hard to get through in the beginning. It's really not much of a detective at first; Dalgliesh has just recovered from an illness and doesn't want to get involved in the affairs of Toynton Grange, and he actually succeeds quite well in staying on the side-line. It's therefore not much of a 'regular' detective novel, because though you do get to know more and more about the inhabitants of Toynton Grange and their lives strictly speaking there's no real detective work going on.From about halfway onward I did find it to become much more exciting, and I did really get drawn into it. I really liked the ending, I hadn't seen it coming and I really liked the way all the lose ends got tied up neatly.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Dalgleish finds out that what's wrong with him is a bad bout of mononucleosis, it's nothing fatal and he should take some time to rest. At the same time he receives an invite from an elderly friend to visit him as he wants to pick his brains about something. Dalgleish is shocked when he arrives that his friend is dead. His friend is living in a group of cottages associated with a house that is now a home for people with degenerative illnesses. Shortly before Dalgleish's friend, Father Baddeley, died, another person in the house also died and as further residents start to have accidents, Dalgleish starts to ask questions and resolves his questions about his career.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I decided to read all of the Adam Daigliesh mysteries in one fell swoop and am glad I did. First, they are classic British mysteries all well-deserving of the respect P.D. James has earned for them and all are a good read. However, what is interesting is to watch the author develop her style from the early ones to the later ones. And, in fact, A Shroud for a Nightingale and The Black Tower (the fourth and fifth in the series) is where she crosses the divide. The later books have much more character development -- both for the players and the detectives -- make Dalgleish more rounded and are generally much more than a good mystery yarn -- they're fine novels that happen to be mysteries. The first three books (Cover Her Face, A Mind to Murder, Unnatural Causes) are just that much more simplistic. But read any or all -- she's a great writer and they are definitely worth the time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    James does a great job at recreating a reclusive, almost cultish society prone to curious habits and an unhealthy proximity. I particularly enjoyed the mix of generations in this one, where old and young live with different world views. This is the second I read where Dalgliesh is an observer of the case, although he actively contributes to its resolution. As always, James's style is impeccable: with few words, she recreates a dark and foreboding atmosphere which keeps the reader on her edge of her seat!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "Here the poor dears don't know whether they're in a nursing home, a commune, a hotel, a monastery or a particularly dotty lunatic asylum." (89) Thus begins Adam Dalgliesh's introduction to Toynton Grange, a small care facility in Dorset by the sea, where he has gone to visit Father Baddeley. He finds the good priest is dead and decides to stay on a few days both to convalesce after his own recent health scare and to find out why he was summoned by his old family friend.As in the previous books in this series, there are numerous unique characters and various strange happenings - enough adventure to lull Commander Dalgleish out of his tentative retirement. My apologies to Phyllis Dorothy for letting the fifth book in this series languish so long after beginning it in the early 2000s. At this rate, it may be another two decades of good reading before I complete the remaining nine books!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book starts slowly and it was difficult for me (as it was for Dalgliesh) to figure out if there was really a mystery worth worrying about. Evil doings pick up in the second half and the ending is terrific.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    While not as good as her Innocent Blood (1980) or the fantastic Children of Men (2006), The Black Tower is a page-turner with complex, fascinating characters. A slew of murders, all of which appear to be natural deaths, almost defeat the recuperating Adam Dalgliesh, who has determined to give up criminal justice following a life-threatening illness. The parallels between Dalgliesh's recovery and the lives of the patients at the nursing home that the detective is visiting in response to a request from an old friend put The Black Tower beyond the typical whodonit. The wrap-up at the end is a little quick, however, with too much explanation from both Dalgliesh and the murdered.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book may have been entirely too English for me to follow. The setup was really good - Dalgliesh receives a letter from his old prelate asking him to visit, then finds him dead when he does - and then come a series of really inexplicable scenes and characters. One character whom is described on the back as a vamp seems to be not particularly sexy, and it's never quite clear to me why many of the characters are living near this asylum, or why anyone would build a black tower out on the headland in the first place. What it came down to is that I never had any clue of what was going on until the end, which was funny, because the ending really wraps everything up neatly. All is explained, all is clear, and it all makes sense.Maybe it's just that the middle part of the book goes so over-the-top on English eccentricism that an American thirty years later can't make sense of it. I would love to see how James would handle writing the same book again today.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I abandoned this one. It seemed repetitive, mean-spirited, and formulaic. All the inmates at the asylum were without any redeeming characteristics.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Dalgliesh is recovering from an extended illness, he decides to visit an old friend while he recuperates and reevaluates his life. This is not an action-packed story, although the end is pretty tense. I enjoyed the slow pacing. James has a way of description which not only tells you about the place, but sets the tone of the story as well.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A pretty good mystery that keeps one guessing until the end.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A conventional but well written who-dunnit.Read Samoa Dec 2003
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I got a little tired of the anthropomorphic objects. The interior musing of Adam Dalgliesh I didn't mind so much, but when the narration got a little too florid it took me out of the story. E.g: 'yellow dandelions, pinpoints of brightness on the faded autumnal grass' which concludes a lengthy intro of a landscape at the beginning of a chapter.
    Some nice passage, p. 18 and p. 271 favorites, and a well done way of having the detective discover the truth before the reader, even though it's form his perspective. Did not guess this one!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Definitely not one of the better Dalgliesh mysteries. There's too much navel gazing on Adam Dagliesh's part, after leaving the hospital recovering from what he thought was death's door. I suppose nearly dying does that to someone. He spends the entire book trying to stay out of the company at the nursing home he has gone to in answer to an old friend (now dead).Yet, Dagliesh cannot stop employing his "little grey cells" (as Poirot would call them), and makes a leap which neatly solves the mystery of serial killings and an unlikely motive. I still don't understand how the leap from young homosexual boy being sent away to heroin smuggling in wheelchairs was made. Nor do I understand how we are expected to believe that the small amount of heroin smuggled would lead to enough money for a somewhat lavish lifestyle on Toyton Grange.Buck up Dagliesh, better times are ahead.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Politically incorrect mystery set in a convalescent home. James actually dares to make her disabled characters unlikable! A Dalgleish mystery and a decent read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I got a little tired of the anthropomorphic objects. The interior musing of Adam Dalgliesh I didn't mind so much, but when the narration got a little too florid it took me out of the story. E.g: 'yellow dandelions, pinpoints of brightness on the faded autumnal grass' which concludes a lengthy intro of a landscape at the beginning of a chapter.
    Some nice passage, p. 18 and p. 271 favorites, and a well done way of having the detective discover the truth before the reader, even though it's form his perspective. Did not guess this one!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    After his release from the hospital, Dalgliesh travels to a country facility for invalids to visit an old family friend, the on-staff priest. He arrives too late, as Father Baddeley died recently and has already been buried, leaving Dalgliesh his books in his will. But the priest isn't the only recent death, as a wheelchair-bound patient threw himself off a cliff just days before Dalgliesh's arrival. The two deaths prompt the Commander, who has decided to quit the police, to keep asking questions even though he hates what he's doing.I believe this is the sixth of the series about the reluctant, poetry writing detective. It's almost a And Then There Were None plot, with a home out on the edge of the sea, and a small cast of characters in constant contact because of the near-isolation, but unable to leave, and nearly all the staff members with a motive.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Took a while to get going. With so many characters in similar situations it was hard keeping track of who was who. May go back and read more of the Dalgleish series.