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3.51 AVERAGE
3.51 AVERAGE
I wasn't too impressed and found this to be rather boring.
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
The time gap between my first book by Dorothy L Sayers and the second is around 2.5 years. After a lot of unselfconscious procrastination, I dug in my heels and got the first book in the Peter Wimsey series. What with starting right at the beginning and all that but was utterly disappointed after having been finished with it. What attracted me most to DLS initially was the sharpness of wit and the fierce intelligence that shines through her stories but this was lacking in the first book. Yes, there was a plausible enough murder mystery and a slightly interesting array of characters but almost all of this was bogged down under acres of dialog.
To me, a mystery is successful if it manages to arrest your attention as a reader. The pages turn as quickly as your eyes can move over the words and there is that overarching question on your mind as to how did this dastardly act come by. This is where I found this book to be lacking for it made my attention wander all over the place. I would read a page or two, put the book down and read something else and come back to this book and again another two pages and so on. This hampered my entire reading progress and I just kept at it, skipping pages and a lot of dialog. There is lot of humorous banter between the Lord Peter and his butler by the name of Bunter which is typical of British wit but then after a while it gets terribly stale. I also happened to chance across reviews where readers went ballistic about the anti-semitic tone used in the book. A lot of ire was directed at the author herself but that seems to be rather misplaced. After all, an author is not her characters. There are quite a few comments in the book that are insufferably elitist but then we are talking about the son of a dowager duchess who is the central point of the story so such things need to be anticipated.
The mystery as a whole is strictly an okay one but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. It does appear awkward to say this about an author who is undisputed queen of crime fiction but there it is, I have gone ahead and said it. So shoot me ! Since I have already come across another book in the series which I found to be very good, it is my assumption that the experience with this book is a singular one. Considering how little this book connected with me, a detailed review would neither be possible nor fair. I’ll pass on recommending this one.
To me, a mystery is successful if it manages to arrest your attention as a reader. The pages turn as quickly as your eyes can move over the words and there is that overarching question on your mind as to how did this dastardly act come by. This is where I found this book to be lacking for it made my attention wander all over the place. I would read a page or two, put the book down and read something else and come back to this book and again another two pages and so on. This hampered my entire reading progress and I just kept at it, skipping pages and a lot of dialog. There is lot of humorous banter between the Lord Peter and his butler by the name of Bunter which is typical of British wit but then after a while it gets terribly stale. I also happened to chance across reviews where readers went ballistic about the anti-semitic tone used in the book. A lot of ire was directed at the author herself but that seems to be rather misplaced. After all, an author is not her characters. There are quite a few comments in the book that are insufferably elitist but then we are talking about the son of a dowager duchess who is the central point of the story so such things need to be anticipated.
The mystery as a whole is strictly an okay one but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. It does appear awkward to say this about an author who is undisputed queen of crime fiction but there it is, I have gone ahead and said it. So shoot me ! Since I have already come across another book in the series which I found to be very good, it is my assumption that the experience with this book is a singular one. Considering how little this book connected with me, a detailed review would neither be possible nor fair. I’ll pass on recommending this one.
With Whose Body? by Dorothy L Sayers, I went back to the very beginning of the Lord Peter Wimsey stories and fell in love with Lord Peter and Bunter and the Dowager Duchess all over again. Of course, there's nothing like the experience of discovering these delightful characters for the first time, but Sayers writes so wonderfully that it's pretty darn close. I loved every minute from the opening: "Oh, damn!" said Lord Peter Wimsey at Picadilly Circus. "Hi, driver!" to the very ending: "Bunter!" "My lord?" "The Napoleon brandy."
In this first of Lord Peter's exploits we have two mysterious circumstances. First, there is the rather odd appearance of a dead body found in an architect's bathtub...found wearing nothing but a pair of gold pince-nez. As the frontispiece says: "The stark naked body was lying in the tub. Not unusual for a proper bath, but highly irregular for murder--especially with a pair of gold pince-nez deliberately perched before sightless eyes." Then there's the disappearance of a prominent financier from his home. A financier who apparently took off in the middle of the night in nothing but his birthday suit. "...one is forced to suppose that a respectable middle-aged Hebrew financier either went mad between twelve and six a.m. and walked quietly out of his house in his birthday suit on a November night, or else was spirited away like the lady in the 'Ingoldsby Legends,' body and bones, leaving only a heap of crumpled clothes behind him." At first, the police suspect that the body in the bath must be the missing man, but this is soon proved to be wrong.
Lord Peter is called into the case on behalf of the architect who soon finds himself suspected of disposing of the man in his bath (though why he wouldn't go all the way and dispose of the body entirely never occurs to the slow-witted Inspector in charge of this one). Meanwhile, his friend, Inspector Parker, is given the task of tracking down the unclothed businessman. The two share information on their individual cases, compare notes, and even exchange missions. After interviewing everyone from an American railroad tycoon to a respectable lawyer in Salisbury to the great nerve specialist Sir Julian Freke, Lord Peter soon has all the clues at hand and it isn't long before he is able to hand Parker the solution to both mysteries on a silver platter.
Although it is always a delight to read the Lord Peter stories for his character alone, this time I was particularly taken with his mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver. Her interactions with Mr. Milligan, the American tycoon, and her recital of the events of the inquest on the body in the bath are absolutely exquisite. She attends the inquest in order to support the aged, near-deaf mother of Mr. Thipps, the poor architect suspected of the murder. Here's the opening bit of her impersonation of Mrs. Thipps being interrogated by the Coroner:
" 'Did you hear anything unsual in the night?' says the little man, leaning forward and screaming at her, and so crimson in the face and his ears sticking out so--just like a cherubim in that poem of Tennyson's--or is a cherub blue?--perhaps it's a seraphim I mean--anyway, you know what I mean all eyes, with little wings on its head."
Wonderful, just wonderful. And the scene with the young medical student towards the end is also not to be missed. I'm so glad I joined up for the Wimsey Challenge giving me a valid excuse for rereading the Sayers mysteries and I definitely needed this little bit of comfort reading after the exertion of reading Lair of the White Worm. As usual, Sayers earns a full five stars.
In this first of Lord Peter's exploits we have two mysterious circumstances. First, there is the rather odd appearance of a dead body found in an architect's bathtub...found wearing nothing but a pair of gold pince-nez. As the frontispiece says: "The stark naked body was lying in the tub. Not unusual for a proper bath, but highly irregular for murder--especially with a pair of gold pince-nez deliberately perched before sightless eyes." Then there's the disappearance of a prominent financier from his home. A financier who apparently took off in the middle of the night in nothing but his birthday suit. "...one is forced to suppose that a respectable middle-aged Hebrew financier either went mad between twelve and six a.m. and walked quietly out of his house in his birthday suit on a November night, or else was spirited away like the lady in the 'Ingoldsby Legends,' body and bones, leaving only a heap of crumpled clothes behind him." At first, the police suspect that the body in the bath must be the missing man, but this is soon proved to be wrong.
Lord Peter is called into the case on behalf of the architect who soon finds himself suspected of disposing of the man in his bath (though why he wouldn't go all the way and dispose of the body entirely never occurs to the slow-witted Inspector in charge of this one). Meanwhile, his friend, Inspector Parker, is given the task of tracking down the unclothed businessman. The two share information on their individual cases, compare notes, and even exchange missions. After interviewing everyone from an American railroad tycoon to a respectable lawyer in Salisbury to the great nerve specialist Sir Julian Freke, Lord Peter soon has all the clues at hand and it isn't long before he is able to hand Parker the solution to both mysteries on a silver platter.
Although it is always a delight to read the Lord Peter stories for his character alone, this time I was particularly taken with his mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver. Her interactions with Mr. Milligan, the American tycoon, and her recital of the events of the inquest on the body in the bath are absolutely exquisite. She attends the inquest in order to support the aged, near-deaf mother of Mr. Thipps, the poor architect suspected of the murder. Here's the opening bit of her impersonation of Mrs. Thipps being interrogated by the Coroner:
" 'Did you hear anything unsual in the night?' says the little man, leaning forward and screaming at her, and so crimson in the face and his ears sticking out so--just like a cherubim in that poem of Tennyson's--or is a cherub blue?--perhaps it's a seraphim I mean--anyway, you know what I mean all eyes, with little wings on its head."
Wonderful, just wonderful. And the scene with the young medical student towards the end is also not to be missed. I'm so glad I joined up for the Wimsey Challenge giving me a valid excuse for rereading the Sayers mysteries and I definitely needed this little bit of comfort reading after the exertion of reading Lair of the White Worm. As usual, Sayers earns a full five stars.
Classic gentleman detective story, first of a series, and an early example of this genre. Published in 1923. Well written, some typical British humor. Good movement through the investigation, I thought it was well paced and satisfying. There was a scene when a young man exclaims no one remembers anything to the detail stated by witnesses in inquests. The amateur Lord Whimsey walks him through questions to arrive at a detailed memory. It was a wonderful exercise in the value of association and challenging for recall. It also, I think, shows the value of the dialectic process in reasoning. We know more than we think we do, if we stop and think through for a moment. Unsurprisingly for the time, there was a lot of antisemitism as well as casual racism and classism. I doubt I will continue the series.
Clearly the first. The character, Wimsey, is different in this one than the later ones I've read. The structure is odd, and the reference to reading and writing mystery novels felt amateur rather than clever. I'm not a fan of the reveal being laid out in a letter, but again - first one, so yeah. This one has heavy anti-Semitic racism. I wish at least one of these could get through the whole mystery without bigotry, but apparently not. Sayers sets the tone from the very start.
SPOIRLES
El asesino es un Doctor que escribo un tratado científico sobre la bases fisiológicas de la Conciencia. Para la autora, hija de un Pastor, el afirmar que la consciencia es un fenómeno biológico, para nada espiritual o metafísico es afirmar que el Alma y Dios no existen, y por eso el mata gente,porque para los cristianos toda moral emana de dios, y si una persona no cree en dios es capaz de cualquier cosa porque no creer en dios es no tener moral... Si eres ateo seguro que estas cansado de escuchar esa cantinela. A penas esto se puede llamar una novela de Detectivesca pero por alguna razón inexplicable es un clásico del genero...
El asesino es un Doctor que escribo un tratado científico sobre la bases fisiológicas de la Conciencia. Para la autora, hija de un Pastor, el afirmar que la consciencia es un fenómeno biológico, para nada espiritual o metafísico es afirmar que el Alma y Dios no existen, y por eso el mata gente,porque para los cristianos toda moral emana de dios, y si una persona no cree en dios es capaz de cualquier cosa porque no creer en dios es no tener moral... Si eres ateo seguro que estas cansado de escuchar esa cantinela. A penas esto se puede llamar una novela de Detectivesca pero por alguna razón inexplicable es un clásico del genero...
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
fast-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:
Complicated
I read this a long time ago and had forgotten all about it. Thanks to Charles for reminding me of this series existence.