If I could do half stars (something I frequently wish I could do), I'd give this two and a half. It was better than "okay" but only just so. Dalgliesh is just so unappealing. He writes poetry, but there is nothing at all that I find poetic about him. And there are tons of poets I don't like, but at least they have personality. He lacks even that. 
 The murder itself was compelling enough to keep me reading and it was a solid procedural with a nice red herring and tiny twist--totally believable tiny twist--at the end. I'll read another (the first in the series, finally, after I picked up #11 a few months ago without realizing it was a series, and now reading #2 because I could find the #1 while our books were all over the house in our tuck-pointing extravaganza [but I've now found #1 and can only hope that it has half as many typos as #2, because they were a consistent irritant:]) when I need a good murder fix. Although I will only come back to it after I've exhausted the Kolla and Brocks.