Young Cordelia Gray finds herself the sole owner of a private detective agency after the suicide of her partner Bernie. Fortunately for the business, wealthy scientist Sr Ronald Callendar soon hires her to investigate the death of his son. Not that there was anything suspicious about it. It’s just that Mark Callendar committed suicide, and Sir Ronald wants to know why. Cordelia travels to Cambridge to investigate, and inserts herself into Mark’s social circle. After spending time at the cottage where he stayed in his last months, Cordelia begins to wonder if his death was so innocent after all – or is she becoming too obsessed with Mark to accept the truth?

Something outside the norm for me – my knowledge of detective fiction between the 1950s and the 2010s is a bit of a dark spot. Not that it’s necessarily bad; just that I’ve hardly read any and know very little of the genre history and context. The writing style was a bit more literary than I’m used to. P.D. James seems detail-obsessed, piling up minutiae of a briefly glimpsed location until I found it hard to construct in my head. There are moments where James creates a vivid picture using this detail, but at other times it was just overwhelming.

The premise is an interesting one, especially coming from the time it was written in, when female private detectives were rare, perhaps even non-existent in fiction. Cordelia Gray is 22 and has had quite an unusual life – raised by nuns, used as a messenger by her itinerant father and his group of radicals. Currently she is the junior partner in the detective agency run by ex-cop Bernie Pryde. At the start of the book, Cordelia finds Bernie dead, by his own hand. Her relationship to him was perhaps the most interesting thread of the book. She returns again and again to his mentorship and his borrowed aphorisms, while recognising him as flawed. This particular thread was tied off in a very satisfying way at the end.
Cordelia herself is presumably the main draw of the book. She’s resilient and determined and clever, but also vulnerable and inexperienced and at times very stupid. I did not really enjoy my time spent with her jagged edges and unexpected tensions, and she never quite felt real to me; maybe she was simply too unusual for me to take, with her – spoilers for early in the book – eagerness to stay in the victim’s cottage, her seriousness and habit of lecturing, and her inexplicable antipathy towards red brick houses.

Most characters other than Cordelia were sketched rather lightly. I felt like P.D. James probably wanted to invest all her characters with depth and life, but the roving nature of detection in this book doesn’t lend itself to that. I could imagine a different version of this book, where Cordelia spends more time in Cambridge, getting to know Mark’s social group; in fact, this was what I expected. In the end we just get a glance and barely get to know these people.
With the old doctor and his wife, who get a single scene, their moment in the sun did present a brief portrait of (the end of) a life. But otherwise, the number of characters who are willing to reveal their backstory or deepest feelings to Cordelia – a complete stranger – is difficult to believe.

Speaking of which: the plot. This seemed far less believable than a good Golden Age book – perhaps the tone clashes with the content. But I think this really was unusually poorly motivated and contrived. Characters clearly did things because the plot required they do. I did say that Cordelia was young and inexperienced, but sometimes her choices went beyond that and felt completely alien. Poor plotting or good characterization? Both? I don’t think being unable to tell is a positive.
The pacing was slow to begin with (though I thought the opening, with Cordelia discovering Bernie’s body, was an excellent introduction), but it does begin to build. Once it reached the half-way point, the book went into overdrive, with completely unexpected thriller scenes. After an extremely contrived early climax, the plot takes a sudden swerve. It was this post-swerve section of the book that I enjoyed the most; it was almost a mini-story on its own. The tension was maintained through the entire final section, and the pay-off right at the end is a satisfying one. It helped that with the main events of the plot finished and left to play out their consequences, the characters were no longer forced to make baffling decisions in order to push the plot, and could act more naturally.

An Unsuitable Job For a Woman conformed to my expectations in some ways. It’s dark and serious. It’s deeply interested in the internal life of its main character. And it can be, as Miss Marple once said of her nephew Raymond West’s writing, “sordid and unpleasant”. That this is likely in service of “realism” is undermined by the frank unbelievability of many scenes. These characters, whom James seems to want us to believe in, are so clearly following the plot, in way that’s much more obvious than in a really good Golden Age book. The plot itself has a number of – not quite holes, but of highly improbable moments. I found Cordelia interesting, if offputting, as a main character, and I think it’s her that I will remember the most about this book. I wouldn’t rule out reading more P.D. James, but I won’t be rushing to find another based on my experience with this book.