Name: An Unsuitable Job for a Woman
ISBN: 9780571253401

P. D. James

Meet Cordelia Gray: twenty-two, tough, intelligent and now sole inheritor of the Pryde Detective Agency. Her first assignment finds her hired by Sir Ronald Callender to investigate the death of his son Mark, a young Cambridge student found hanged in mysterious circumstances. Cordelia is required to delve into the hidden secrets of the Callender family and soon realizes it is not a case of suicide, and that the truth is entirely more sinister. PD James is the bestselling author of Death Comes To Pemberley, Children of Men and The Murder Room. Her first Cordelia Gray novel An Unsuitable Job For a Woman is a brilliant work of crime fiction packed with secrets and suspense. This novel has been adapted for television twice, the second adaptation in 1997 starred Helen Baxendale as Cordelia Gray.

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

P.D. James

Heather Murray

A fantastic and classic murder mystery. This was recommended to me by a few friends and when I finally read it, I understood why. Now I just want to read the rest of her books! The writing was straight forward and concise, which was perfect for the mystery. Parts of it were cozy, which is great for this genre, and parts were shocking! All in all, a wonderful read. 

The only thing to know about this book is the chapters are quite long. I'm one of those people who reads chapter-to-chapter and I found myself losing a lot of time while reading this. I think there are only 7 chapters in all, which means each one is packed with stuff. Probably was just a little different from what I'm used to in modern mystery books, which drags things out a bit. But I still loved the entire story and thought that everything worked together to deliver good character development and a few twists and turns. I highly recommend!!

Lisa Miller

Unlike the Dalgliesh series in this book James gives more attention to the young protagonist Cordelia Grey and the young victim, Mark Callender. Usually, under Dalgliesh, most of the attention is given to the community surrounding the victim, who are of course all suspects too, and their adult, responsible, more often than not middle-aged, 'ordinary' lives and motivations are actually really interesting meanwhile details about Dalgliesh's private life and personal history are eked out. Here Cordelia has had a fascinating life for one so young and is used to explain how and why she sees the world as she does.

The use of Dalgliesh is what bumped this up from a 4 to 5 star rating. Dalgliesh physically absent for 90% of the book is present throughout as he had unknowingly, inadvertently trained Cordelia through a third party - which was delightful. Furthermore she has been trained as a PI - not exactly bound by the law like the Superintendent. Then the final part at the end, which was unnecessary except as a delight to the reader has a showdown between the wise unbeaten Dalgliesh and young, untried Cordelia and he meets his match!

For this reason alone I recommend this is read as part of the Dalgliesh series. It can be read alone but a lot of the enjoyment I got would be lost without some sort of prior knowledge of Dalgliesh.

Sonia Grgas

Veronica Overholt

Connor 

Kayleigh hughes

Sonja H

Yulande Lindsay

Laura

maider

Cindy Lieberman

Sabine Delorme

Carroll Lachnit

This is the first Cordelia Gray mystery which introduces us to the young sleuth, now the sole proprietor of the Pryde Detective Agency, and hard at work on her first independent case. Sir Ronald Callender's son Mark is found hanged in mysterious circumstances, and he hires Cordelia to shed some light on his son's apparent suicide. But as Cordelia pieces together the facts surrounding his death, delving back into the long-buried secrets of the Callender family, she finds that Mark had many good friends - and one deadly enemy.