P.D. James's Shroud for a Nightengale

I just finished this novel.  Wait.  I should back up.  As part of my reprioritizing project, I've decided I am going to try to post more mini-book reviews.  For a while, I was trying to create a post for everything I read; it got to be too much.  But for novels that either I'm teaching or that really speak to me, I find that posting a little something rather helps me to think through the work.  Currently, I'm working on reading through all of James's Dalgliesh novels in order, which has been lots of fun so far.  (Ditto for the Lord Peter novels from Sayers and the Morse novels from Dexter.  Morse has a special place in my heart, as some of you know!)  So one thing that I appreciate about Dalgliesh is that he's this complex, and therefore believable and sympathetic, character.  And he has all these seeming-contradictions about him.  He's this kick-ass, by the book police detective, but he also publishes poetry, critically acclaimed poetry.  Also, he seems to have this highly developed religious, moral, and ethical sense, but he finds, sometimes, that competing ethical claims somehow conflict.  This, again, strikes me as particularly true to life.  Dalgliesh, like so many of his detective brothers, seems to be unable to form meaningful, long-term attachments with the opposite sex.  I think that this relative lack of a personal life is probably, at least in part, what makes him a good detective.  And arguably, his committment to his job is a factor in his apparent inability to sustain relationships.  But I think that for Dalgliesh (and Morse) it's much deeper than just that their jobs get in the way of their relationships.  I mean, if it were that simple, they could remedy the situation if they wanted to.  Rather, it seems that loss and pain in their respective pasts keep these characters from forming loving, intimate attachments.  And there's something near universal about this; it's certainly something that I can relate to on some level.  Rejection and loss certainly lead at least some of us to be wary of personal attachments, right?  And I suppose, one way to do that is to be married to our jobs; it's certainly easy to justify being lonely when we say that our jobs just don't allow us the time or energy to pursue relationships.  So I realize this hasn't at all been a review of Shroud for a Nightengale, but it seems like something worth saying.  I mean, I keep asking myself why I'm finding these novels so compelling.  And for me, at least part of the attraction has to do with the central detective figures.  Maybe I need to reinstate my Sunday evening "dates" with Morse.  *sigh*