For Dalgliesh, the setting holds special meaning, since he spent part of his youth there. He experiences a deep nostalgia for those summer days, rediscovers close ties to the former warden, the elderly and devout Father Martin, and finds peace and rest in this place. Thus, he feels comfortable asking questions about the troubled youth who perished beneath a sudden fall of sand from the cliff above him. James introduces the players, the conflicts, the relationships, and the building tensions with Dalgliesh on the spot observing, rather than coming in after murder has been clearly committed. Amid talk of religious art and of the controversy surrounding a papyrus fragment that could shake the foundations of Christianity, Dalgliesh suddenly finds himself in the midst of multiple murders that strike at the heart of this small, pious community. Although three deaths arouse Dalgliesh’s intuitive suspicions, it is the murder of the archbishop that provides the impetus for calling in his London team. Once on the spot, they and he uncover some of the nasty secrets behind the innocent facades: pedophilia, incest, lesbianism, and greed, red herrings that distract from the main offense. With almost everyone lying to some degree or simply failing to tell all they know because they do not realize the significance of minor observations, progression toward a swift resolution proves difficult.

In this novel, Dalgliesh meets and begins a relationship with Dr Emma Lavenham, a visiting teacher from the University of Cambridge.As in Original Sin (1995) and A Certain Justice (1997), James’s achievement is not to pin down individual guilt, but to show the place of crime and guilt and sin in a whole culture. It would be interesting if James deliberately chose the name St. Anselm’s to reflect Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God. This argument was successfully undermined by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason, and it’s formal errors are revealed by modern predicate logic. (As a Christian myself I think there are other arguments that are sound ...)

I was a little surprised when I turned on this Inspector Dalgleish and found out that he is now Martin Shaw and not Roy Marsden. Worse yet, after making the character of Dalgleish so popular, P.D. James apparently told someone she likes Shaw better. How's that for gratitude.James prefaces Dalgliesh’s first interview with Father Sebastian by describing the warden, his clothes, and his office: From the award-winning master of literary crime fiction, a classic work rich in tense drama and psychological insight.