Critics note that Cordelia's characterization shifts between
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman and
The Skull Beneath the Skin. Joan G. Kotker states the second novel creates "this image of Gray as a failure," where similar plot elements to the first novel "are treated in such a way as to cast doubt on the credibility of the initial event and of Gray's interpretation of it." Similarly, Nicola Nixon suggests that the sequel is intentionally structured like
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman to "highlight various subtle adjustments to Cordelia - adjustments, I would suggest, that are designed primarily to quash readers' enthusiasm for her as a proto-feminist."
A Catalogue of Crime writes of the book: "Nothing is more disappointing than the poor work of a good craftsman. P. D. James, hailed as
Christie's successor and in some ways an abler hand at characterization, has given steady proof of her mastery of the genre. She even created in Cordelia Gray a likable and credible woman investigator. Here she brings her back, but makes her act like a bewildered maiden, though she heads a London detective agency. Besides, the plot is full of unlikelihoods, including the reason for the island setting and the crime itself." - In a 1982 book review,
Julian Symons of
The New York Times wrote "'The Skull Beneath the Skin' is perhaps an acknowledgment that she had reached too far, a deliberate step back in the direction of orthodoxy. It is a disappointment to the extent that the criminal results don't flow as they should from the stated motives, but this is still an absorbing story, paced and written with fine calculation, a work quite beyond the scope of more than a very few of her contemporaries." ==References==