Roy Marsden returns for another of his ever-deepening performances as Inspector Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard, the protagonist hero of a series of much-honored, P.D. James mystery novels. A perfect match of procedural deduction, horrifying but imaginative crimes to solve, and James's familiar embrace of resonant characterization, A Taste for Death finds Dalgliesh investigating twin murders in a London church: one victim a beleaguered, former minister of the Crown and a man of Dalgliesh's favorable acquaintance, the other a homeless man accustomed to finding shelter in the vestibule. Dalgliesh, a perfect and perhaps unique blend of humble compassion and take-no-prisoners probing mind, becomes the thread in a complex tale of multiple motives, seething emotions, unusual suspects, and such puzzling clues as a burnt diary, all in the effort to find an elusive link between two dead men of very different breeding and destinies. --Tom Keogh