An Unsuitable Job for a Woman is the title of a detective novel by P. D. James and of a TV series of four dramas developed from that novel. It was published by Faber and Faber in the UK in 1972 and by Charles Scribner's Sons in the US. The book features private detective Cordelia Gray, the protagonist of both this title and The Skull Beneath the Skin (1982). It is noted for introducing a new type of female detective at the start of the feminist era. Plot summary 22-year-old private detective Cordelia Gray walks into the London office she shares with former police detective Bernie Pryde to find her partner has committed suicide. Pryde has left everything, including his unlicensed handgun, to Cordelia, who decides to keep the failing agency open out of gratitude. When she returns to her office from the funeral service, she is visited by her first client, Elizabeth Leaming, assistant to prominent scientist Sir Ronald Callender, whose son Mark recently hanged himself. Cordelia travels to Cambridge, where Mark had left university and taken a job as gardener despite decent grades and the prospect of a considerable inheritance from his maternal grandfather. Her task is to discover the reason for Mark’s death but she begins to suspect foul play. She meets Mark's student friends, who are reluctant to talk and attempt to convince Cordelia that his death really was suicidal. Cordelia decides to move into the rundown cottage on the estate where Mark had worked. As she sifts through Mark's effects, trying to get a clearer picture of his life, she becomes ever more convinced that his death could not have been suicide. Repeatedly, friendly overtures from Mark's former companions try to lead her away from the investigation but Cordelia is determined to succeed in her first solo case. Returning to the cottage one night and finding an effigy hanging from the same hook on which Mark's body had been suspended convinces her that someone is trying to scare her off. She finds out that a certain Nanny Pilbeam, formerly nanny to Mark's mother, had attended Mark's cremation and goes to question her. The old woman tells Cordelia that she went to see Mark at his college and gave him a Book of Common Prayer that his mother had wanted him to have when he turned 21. Cordelia finds the book in the cottage and discovers