After Adam's foray into the Cambridgeshire fens, PD James waited nearly ten years before picking up her pen again and writing a new novel. This is a more complex and longer story, although the crime at the heart of it is actually quite simple. A Tory Government Minister, resigns his job and seat, and is then found dead with his throat cut in a vestry of a small North London church, alongside a tramp in a similar state. Many assume it is suicide, Dalgleish rapidly concludes it is not. The dysfunctional family arrangements of the man, Paul Berowne, together with the added complexity that Adam Dalgleish both knew and liked him make this story more involved and complex. In addition, Adam, now heads up a new Scotland Yard unit, dedicated to such high profile crimes, and the background stories and family arrangements of his officers, DCI John Massingham and DI Kate Miskin, also consume several chapters. This novel was far longer than it needed to be as PD James focuses so very much on the architectural and decor details of every building and room in which the action takes place, that you are often tempted to skip over lots of pages where nothing much happens. Interesting, but not the most enjoyable Detective story I have read recently.