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3.94 AVERAGE
3.94 AVERAGE
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
After a slow dip in quality, a trip to the beach helps Dorothy get her groove back. All of the elements that made me fall in love with the series are back and in vibrant color. The humor and class-conscious satire are again at the forefront, as well as a newfound sense of adventure as a pair of non-detectives scour a small seaside town for evidence. There's even a show-stopping scene where Lord Peter drops the act entirely to make a genuinely aching plea to Harriet Vale, who comes into full focus here as a confident, resourceful, and subtly conniving character. I miss her whenever she's gone from a scene.
This plot is shaggier and more sprawling than the tightly-wound early entries (it's twice as long as the debut), but instead of bothering me I found the mess to be welcome and fascinating. At no point do the many, many details and colorful, hilarious side characters feel extraneous or convoluted for its own sake. Instead, the way this case shifts in and out of focus with each discovery, the way it refuses to add up and pulls from so many incongruous points at once helps elevate this book beyond the detective genre. By being openly hostile toward the convenience of the mystery novel's many conventions, Sayers places this one firmly in the ugly, contradictory real world.
This series has always been in conversation with its peers and often indulges in a kind of meta-awareness, but it isn't until this one that, by sheer force of quality and a sharpening of purpose, Sayers proves to be the mystery writer's mystery writer, not just a detective novelist but a novelist full stop. It isn't simply arch and winking that she employs a mystery writer and a Sherlock-skewering dandy to solve this crime together. She knows she is inviting extra scrutiny by calling out her contemporary writers, and the overwhelming success of this novel is such a flex. It's needlessly aggressive and I love it.
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
lighthearted
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
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:
No
Listened to the BBC radio adaptation, not the full novel. Next time will try the whole novel. A but all over the place.
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Another very fun entry in the Wimsey series, full of excellent puzzles and featuring a warming relationship with the redoubtable Harriet Vane. A strangely abrupt ending is the only flaw.
Absolute bliss. Of course, I'd rank almost every on of Sayers' Wimsey books as 5-stars but this is one of the top two or three.
The period feel, the characters, the complexity of the crime and its solution... Impossible to improve upon.
The period feel, the characters, the complexity of the crime and its solution... Impossible to improve upon.
A thoroughly enjoyable read--it really is remarkable how much Sayers seemed to grow with every book she wrote--which nevertheless suffers the fatal flaw of not being a Peter & Harriet book which isn't Gaudy Night. There were some wonderful character moments, but overall, could have used less entertaining but fantastically overconceived mystery and more flawed, wounded people learning to let love into their lives. Also, needs more Bolsheviks. I will not spoil anything by revealing the precise amount of Bolsheviks in the novel; suffice it to say that, however small or great that quantity may be, it is insufficient.
