An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

 This is a review of An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P. D. James. (1972)

Cordelia Grey is a very serious woman not given to flights of emotion. When her partner and friend killed himself she quickly took over the PI business even though everyone said it wasn’t suitable for her. She found her first job, investigating the suicide death of Mark Callender, the son of a famous scientist. A sir Ronald Callender.

As the story continues she questions all of Mark’s friends and former lovers and explores the last final days of the man. Mark was an unremarkable boy who left school and became a gardener in an out of the way spot. Cordelia believes it wasn’t suicide but all the evidence is circumstantial. When she returns to the place she’s squatting someone has hung up her bedding in the manner of Marks death to scare her. She takes it down, checks to see if the knot is the same, sets a trap and goes to bed.

That was the first three of 7 chapters. 

It reminds me of reading a hard boiled mystery in the vein of Raymond Chandler or Dashiel Hammet. Great stories but so much to remember. When reading the story the sheer amount of detail threatens to overwhelm everything. We learn so many useless things, such as the names of Cordelia’s two previous lovers, George and Clark, how scandalous people are when they drink too much. What color the doors of the houses on the street are. It’s the kind of detail that would fit into an early 2004 CSI episode where we see the murder from the point of view of the bullet. Visually cool and paints a wonderful picture but it slows down the story.

In the end Cordelia is able to solve the murder through deduction, hard work and pluck. I admit I was intrigued by the scene where she was tossed down a well but the action was lacking. This was a book showcasing how strong the main character actually was and how she makes the right choices. 

However the ending of the story took too long to resolve itself and added an unnecessary element with a secret shared between two women who don’t actually like each other. The secret itself petered out and went nowhere leaving me unsatisfied.