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Book Review of The Black Tower (Adam Dalgliesh, Bk 5)

The Black Tower (Adam Dalgliesh, Bk 5)
reviewed on


THE BLACK TOWER, a profoundly bleak novel set in an isolated home for "the young disabled," a euphemistic term for victims of slowly progressing but ultimately fatal muscular disease.
The story begins when Inspector Dalgliesh, himself recovering from both a serious illness and a crisis of confidence, is invited to Toynton Grange by the home's elderly chaplin; something is amiss, and the chaplin would welcome Dalgliesh's advice. But when Dalgliesh arrives, he finds his old friend has died a few days earlier. With little to go on except his own suspicion, Dalgliesh slowly, grudingly begins to investigate... and finds one suspicious death after another.