The Nine Taylors

Warning - spoiler

I don't know if the mode of death in The Nine Taylors is even possible, but other than that it's a perfect mystery. On a snowy New Year's Eve, Lord Peter drives his car into a ditch and ends up substituting for a flu-ridden bell ringer. A few days later, the gravedigger finds an unexpected and unknown body in the Thorpe family grave. Is the man connected to the 20-year-old jewel theft which led to the Thorpe family downfall? Unfortunately, the mystery is padded out a bit with arcane facts about bell ringing. Still, it's satisfying and an evening with Lord Peter is always enjoyable.

Murder Must Advertise

Sometimes the adaptation is better.  I fell in love with Lord Peter Wimsey through the early-70s cardboard-set adaptations, and they're still highly entertaining.  So are Sayers's books, but on my third reading of Murder Must Advertise, I have to admit that it's not one of her best.  Someone killed copywriter Victor Dean, so the president of Pym's Publicity asks Lord Peter to go undercover as Dean's replacement.  Meanwhile, Peter's brother-in-law DI Charles Parker is trying to break a drug smuggling ring which centers around Dian DeMomerie - whom Dean had coincidentally dated.  The two men (well, mainly Peter) solve the crimes mostly through luck and it's not a particularly satisfying conclusion.  What makes the book worth reading are the scenes set at Pym's.  Sayers had worked as a copywriter in the early 1920s (some of her Guinness slogans are still in use) and she really captures the office politics and makes the minutiae of the profession entertaining.

Five Red Herrings

Thirty years lends perspective to characters.  I've read Five Read Herrings at twice and seen the cardboard-set BBC adaptation at least five times, but never thought of why Sandy Campbell was so unpleasant.  I never thought he deserved to be killed, but this time I found him to be more tragic than terrible.  The sort of person who's disliked because he's unlikable, but then overreacts and makes himself unbearable.  We've all known people like him, co-workers or classmates, and maybe, once we no longer have to deal with them, squirm a bit at memories of how we treated them.

Since Campbell was so despised, no one is particularly surprised when his accidental death turns out to be murder.  Six of his fellow artists - the killer and the five red herrings - are suspects, and Lord Peter and Bunter set out to solve the crime.  Here's where I had another revelation; Five Red Herrings is a bit like a Monty Python sketch with a twist.  The solution turns on railroad timetables an coincidence, along with a missing piece of evidence.  Diverting and clever, and much lighter than Lord Peter's last three outings.

Strong Poison

- But, by the way, you're bearing in mind, aren't you, that I've had a lover?
- Oh, yes.  So have I, if it comes to that.  In fact, several. It's the sort of thing that might happen to anybody.  I can produce quite good testimonials.

There's something faintly ridiculous about Lord Peter Wimsey.  He's a bright, active gentleman who hides that behind the mask of a foolish, idle aristocrat.  Of course his first proposal to Harriet Vane wouldn't be the typical dinner-and-roses affair.  Instead, it's the postscript to Lord Peter's promise to find Harriet innocent of murder.  Someone killed her former lover, Peter Boyes, with arsenic a few weeks after Harriet bought some while researching her most recent mystery novel.  Except for the coffee Harriet had served him, nothing he'd eaten in the prior 12 hours had been eaten by him alone (and only the omelette he shared with his cousin, Norman Urquart had been eaten by only one person).  A stroke of luck (and, to be honest, coincidence) saved Harriet from the scaffold - Miss Katherine Alexandra Climpson, proprietor of Lord Peter's investigative secretarial service was on the jury and just didn't think Harriet Vane killed Phillip Boyes.  The hung jury gave Lord Peter a month to investigate.

If Harriet didn't kill Boyes, then who did?  Lord Peter, through one of those potential testimonial-givers, meets Harriet's and Boyes's bohemian crowd who agree that the psychology of the case is wrong - but don't know who else could have killed Boyes.  Upon meeting Boyes's father, he learns of a possible motive - a scandalous great-aunt may have left him money, and Norman Urquart, an attorney, handled the estate.  With the help of Miss Climpson (who impersonates a medium to spy on an impressionable nurse) and an experienced secretary placed by Miss Climpson in Urquart's office, Lord Peter finds the motive and deduces the (now scientifically discredited) means.  While she relies a bit too much on coincidence, Sayers wrote, as usual, a tightly plotted and highly amusing mystery.  Once again, re-reading allowed me to really appreciate the humor in Miss Climpson's highly emphasized letter to her boss, and I can just imagine the apparently fluffy-brained spinster enjoying her evenings as One Who Speaks to the Dead.

The Upleasentness at the Bellona Club

Dorothy Sayers is one of the masters of the classic, Golden Age mystery, and The Unpleasentness at the Bellona Club is, on one level a typical example.  On Armistice Day, General Fentiman's grandson finds him dead, in a comfy armchair at the Bellona Club.  A few days later, General Fentiman's lawyer asks Lord Peter Wimsey (who was at the Bellona Club when the body was discovered) to unravel a problem.  The General had reconciled with his estranged sister hours before his death, and she had changed her will.  Lady Dormer had also died on November 11, and if she had predeceased her brother, he inherited the bulk of her estate (£12,000 would go to Lady Dormer's niece Ann), which would then pass to his grandson Robert, minus £2000 to his grandson George.  If Lady Dormer predeceased the General, Ann would inherit her estate, minus £7500 to each of General Fentiman's grandsons.

So far, it's all fairly straightforward, except the General's body was moved after death, throwing the time of death into question.  That, in turn, opens up the question of how he died - did his heart simply give out after the emotional meeting with his sister, or was he murdered?  And by whom?   George and Ann benefited if the General died before Lady Dormer, Robert if the General last, and all three inherited a substantial amount.  Lord Peter, of course, solves the mystery, and the murder's identity would have been a surprise if I hadn't read the book twice before and seen the BBC adaptation half a dozen times.

I said that this is a classic mystery on one level, and it is.  On another level, it's a fairly early depiction of PTSD.  Most of Sayers's novels refer to Lord Peter's shell shock, and he has a breakdown at the end of Whose Body.  Lord Peter, has money and position which help provide coping mechanisms.  George Fentiman's situation seems calculated to make his shell shock worse.  He's a "gentleman" who now has to work, but keeps losing jobs because of his condition, and he's living in an era when PTSD is seen as a sign of weakness, not as an illness.  Modern readers are used to a little bit of social commentary in genre fiction, but I don't think it was quite so common 90 years ago.  This is why I re-read mysteries, particularly classics.  The second or third time around, I don't just see the puzzle but also the framework, and gain insights into the world as it was.

Unnatural Death

Unnatural Death starts with a perfect murder - one that looks natural. Lord Peter Wimsey and his friend Detective Charles Parker are discussing death over dinner when a fellow diner breaks in with the tale of an unsuspected murder. The man, a doctor whose country practice had recently been destroyed by a rumor that he had caused (directly or indirectly) the death of one of his patients. Understandably, the man declines to give his name, but Lord Peter can't let this rest. He gives his assistant, the apparently dithery spinster Alexandra Climpson, the task of finding the doctor's late 'victim' and acting as his agent in the investigation. Miss Climpson finds the victim, Agatha Dawson, and the village and settles herself into its distaff society. Meanwhile, Lord Peter's search for the servants dismissed from the Dawson home leads to the death of one and a near escape for Lord Peter himself. A dropped prayer book, an attempt to frame a distant relative (with the unlikely name of Rev. Hallelujah Dawson), and letters which cross in the mail lead to a much more climatic ending than one would expect when the murder's identity is so clear.

I've already mentioned that I'm re-reading the Lord Peter mysteries, and as with Clouds of Witness, I'm getting much more of the humor this time around. Peter and Charles usually investigate separately, but when they interview a witness together, Charles always tries to rush the witness. This invariably causes the witness to go further off point, leading Peter to kick his friend or whisper sarcastic comments while gently leading the witness back to the topic. Miss Clipson's letters to Peter also made me smile - they're informative but so full of emphasized words and phrases that you read them in the voice of an elderly gossip sharing the latest over coffee and a biscuit.

There's one more aspect of Unnatural Death which I didn't notice in the past. Sayers speaks of 'mannish' career women, and independent women aren't viewed in a totally favorable light. However, Sayers was a career woman - an expert in medieval history with an MA from Oxford, she also worked as an advertising copywriter for a few years. I wonder if she was writing what she thought the public would want to read, or was she reflecting criticism that had been aimed at her?

Clouds of Witness

Ensconced in a luxurious Parisian hotel, Lord Peter Wimsey finds that his man Bunter has packed their things - Peter's brother, the Duke of Denver, has been arrested for murder of their sister Mary's fiance, Dennis Cathcart, and clearly Peter is the only person who can clear the somewhat dim Duke's name.  The Duke refuses to explain why he was wandering the moors at the time of Cathcart's murder and Lady Mary's deception has put the time of death into doubt.  Peter and his friend, Inspector Charles Parker of Scotland Yard follow a jeweled trail to Paris, across a boggy moor, and eventually to New York, with Peter arriving at his brother's trial in the House of Lords just in time to give the vital piece of evidence.  

I've read Clouds of Witness at least twice, and recently re-watched the BBC mini-series so nothing in the book was even slightly mysterious.  Because I could just sit back and enjoy the story, I noticed a somewhat comic subplot.  I don't think I'd noticed in previous readings how clear it is that Charles is in love with Mary from the beginning of the book, and Peter doesn't see it either.  When he realizes, he's shocked - not, as Charles first thinks, because of the class distinctions but because his sister has shown such terrible taste in men that he's afraid she's going to turn down his best friend in a fit of stupidity.

Whose Body?

Acorn Media has rereleased the early-70s Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, and I've just finished watching the first two.  I love the atmosphere - the clothes, the props, the attitude.  I think I could very easily have been the eccentric relative to some wealthy, titled family - for one thing, I think 'eccentric' sounds so much nicer than 'weird.'  

Lord Peter is clearly eccentric, and wealthy.  He has a fabulous flat, collects rare books, and owns a large private car in the early 1920s.  He also investigates crimes - not a gentleman's job at a time when gentlemen were defined by not having jobs.  His frightfully conventional brother, the Duke of Denver, abhors his hobby but their mother, the Dowager Duchess, takes a more favorable view.  It's the Dowager Duchess who calls Lord Peter when the architect reconstructing the local church finds a naked corpse with a pair of pince-nez glasses in his bath.  Lord Peter investigates, and finds that the body is probably not that of the affluent man he's been groomed to appear to be.  Also investigating the body is Inspector Charles Parker, who is investigating the case of a missing financier who roughly fits the description of the body in the bathtub.  The body is not that of Sir Ruben Levy, but Lord Peter finds too many coincidences to believe that the murders are unlinked.  

I've read Whose Body at least twice, so I know who did it, but that didn't diminish my enjoyment of the novel.  Sayers deserves her place as one of the grand masters of the golden age of mystery.  Her Wimsey novels are cleverly plotted, with memorable characters (and even more memorable names - Inspector Sugg, Sir Julian Freake) and the right balance of clues and obfuscation for the reader to solve the mystery but not feel stupid if stumped.