[An Unsuitable Job for a Woman] shows what a suitable job it is for P. D. James to be a mystery writer. Her fifth book honorably carries on the tradition of the classic English mystery—literate, intelligent, with shrewdly observed characters and sound plotting—as she deals with contemporary university students during a summer at Cambridge, and the puzzling suicide of a young man….

P. D. James is a mystery novelist of substance, an acute observer of scene and character, and she writes with style.

Jean White, "With Intent to Kill," in Book World—The Washington Post (copyright © 1973 The Washington Post Company), April 15, 1973, p. 12.