A Tough One For Me

I seem to recall this as one of the Dalgliesh novels that I did not enjoy as much as I did others, and that it took more than one attempt to read it before I was successful - this was written during the period when James's novels became longer and more expansive. I'm having a similar experience with the TV adaptation - the fact that I took a break of several months after about half of the second episode probably hasn't helped, but I recall being confused in the first episode as to who the characters were and what their relationships were. So I re-watched the entire second episode just to be safe. Another problem here is that the dialog is often very hard to understand - not a great example of elocution here, I'm afraid.

"In my case, self-absorption is completely justified."