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3.9 AVERAGE
3.9 AVERAGE
My favourite non-Harriet LPW novel. Intriguing plot, great sense of place, compelling characters who I cared about, and an ending that made me cry. I also fell down a bell ringing wikipedia rabbit hole.
Another entertaining entry in the Wimsey series, complete with Bunter at last! (Maybe it hasn't been as long as it feels...)
3.5 stars
Certain scenes definitely felt 5 stars. But I listened to this one on audio and the book did not translate well--hard to keep track of characters and the code when you can't see them. I recommend tackling this one in print.
I did enjoy it, though. I forgot how much I love Lord Peter Wimsey. He is simply the best. And here he is at his best--dropping everything to ring bells at a parsonage, championing an orphan girl, delighting over a difficult mystery. And it is a difficult one, full of obscure motives and stolen jewels and all that other good stuff.
I certainly feel quite satisfied with it.
Certain scenes definitely felt 5 stars. But I listened to this one on audio and the book did not translate well--hard to keep track of characters and the code when you can't see them. I recommend tackling this one in print.
I did enjoy it, though. I forgot how much I love Lord Peter Wimsey. He is simply the best. And here he is at his best--dropping everything to ring bells at a parsonage, championing an orphan girl, delighting over a difficult mystery. And it is a difficult one, full of obscure motives and stolen jewels and all that other good stuff.
I certainly feel quite satisfied with it.
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Lord Peter Wimsey has never been my favorite detective, and The Nine Tailors took me way longer to read than a Christie would. I primarily blame the incredible amount of pages Sayers devoted to the fine art of bell ringing. Do I want to know what a Kent Treble Bob sounds like? Sure. Did I feel a little Quasimodo by the end of the novel, screaming "The bells! the bells!" internally? Absolutely.
I don't really know much about bell ringing so sometimes the technical things hung me up, but it was still enjoyable. (Even if I picked up on some of the twists quite a bit before LP - but that's probably because these started the tropes that I'm now familiar with.)
While I atill have no clue about change ringing, I do enjoy rereading this mystery.
Not only are her mysteries difficult to solve ( a plus for any mystery writer), Sayers also writes beautifully and eloquently. She is such a pleasure to read.
I started this audiobook several times, and had to stop it because I kept falling asleep. I just couldn't get past the long, early passages on bell-ringing. But I decided to give it another try last week, and I'm glad I did. Once you get past the interminable campanology (which isn't especially crucial to the resolution of the mystery, unless you count the cipher that appears later in the book), there's quite a lovely story here. Sayers excels at writing portraits of little English villages in the 1920s and 30s, with a bit of murder and puzzle-solving thrown in. And every Wimsey book, of course, has Lord Peter Wimsey in it, and his faithful manservant Bunter, being both expert and a bit bumbling at the same time. There's something very P.G. Wodehouse about them, and they always make me laugh. They're one of my favourite fictional duos.
Apart from those joys though, this novel is a bit meh. It takes a quarter of the book before the murder happens. And then the mystery is not very mysterious. (Sayers cannot match Christie at crafting ingenious solutions). I guessed the identity of the corpse almost immediately. The person(s) involved in his death were just as obvious, since there are few suspects. And once the reader is told where the man died, it's easy to guess the method. I was irritated at Wimsey's unusual slowness in puzzling out these points - he's usually far ahead of the reader, and his cleverness is usually one of the highlights of a Wimsey mystery. But nevermind. A sweet English village - with a touch of theft, inbreeding and murder - is a pleasant place to visit for a time. I'm happy to have read it.
Apart from those joys though, this novel is a bit meh. It takes a quarter of the book before the murder happens. And then the mystery is not very mysterious. (Sayers cannot match Christie at crafting ingenious solutions). I guessed the identity of the corpse almost immediately. The person(s) involved in his death were just as obvious, since there are few suspects. And once the reader is told where the man died, it's easy to guess the method. I was irritated at Wimsey's unusual slowness in puzzling out these points - he's usually far ahead of the reader, and his cleverness is usually one of the highlights of a Wimsey mystery. But nevermind. A sweet English village - with a touch of theft, inbreeding and murder - is a pleasant place to visit for a time. I'm happy to have read it.