On a desolate stretch of the East Anglian coast, high atop a sweep of cliffs, sits the theological college of St. Anselm's. Down below, smothered by a fall of sand, lies the body of a young ordinand, the son of a powerful business mogul who wants Scotland Yard to investigate his death. Dalgliesh, doubting there is much to uncover in the case, agrees to go, motivated only by a desire to revisit a place where he spent several happy summers in his boyhood. Yet no sooner does he arrive than the college is torn apart by a sacrilegious murder and Dalgliesh finds himself embroiled in one of the most puzzling and horrific cases of his career: no one is above suspicion, and suspects abound.

Death in Holy Orders grips and moves us from beginning to end, blessed with extraordinary psychological and emotional richness. The memorable characters and the wonderfully evoked wild coastal setting and religious world in which the action takes place demonstrate yet again why P.D. James ranks as one of the great novelists of our time.