This is one of those English cosy mysteries, and it puts me in mind of Agatha Christie and Miss Marple, except with Miss Marple (such of them as I've read, anyway) I get the feeling that Christie may sometimes be skewering her village characters but is still basically fond of them, while James comes across as a lot more cynical in her depictions. Stephen, especially, comes off fairly badly here, even though he's not much more than thoughtless; James manages to make him so small and self-obsessed that when the rather unpleasant Catherine finally gives up on him, I'm actually relieved for her, even though I don't like her at all! I do think that Sally, the victim, is drawn with not as much subtlety as the rest, and it is a little difficult not to sink into victim-blaming here, which is something of an achievement when most of the rest of the characters are so unlikable.

Not all of them, though. The ones I do end up liking have at least some self-awareness about them, and their cutting assessments of others (and implicitly, of themselves) are finely observed. As for Dalgliesh himself, he's a bit of a cipher still. I rather get the feeling that he could be swapped out for any detective of reasonable intelligence at this point, but this is the first book in a series, so I suspect that will improve as the books go on. I'm interested enough to read on, anyway, and that very genteel, absolutely brutal cynicism is the main reason for that.