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3.78 AVERAGE
3.78 AVERAGE
Not quite sure what I just read. There is a classic crime/detective story in there but the racism subplot was unnecessary, and a lot of the book seems to be dedicated to the apparently difficult question of why God made lesbians (because they’re good for society, better than men and generally a good example). Oh and religious bits ranging from snobbery (only good Anglo-Catholics appreciate a good lesbian apparently) to completely out of nowhere antisemitism. And the subplot about the distant cousin/Caribbean origin priest was almost completely unnecessary.
I will definitely not be rereading, I’m just deciding whether I think it’s worth putting back out there for someone else to read.
I will definitely not be rereading, I’m just deciding whether I think it’s worth putting back out there for someone else to read.
It's sometimes hard to rate these old books since accepted writing styles differ so much over the years. And I come into books written in the 1920s expecting a certain amount of casual racism. For a while I thought this book was doing pretty good compared to others until mid point and then BAM. It wasn't even casual racism. It was in your face over the top racism to the point that the other characters in the 1920s are going WOW she's racist. Of course in their attempts to explain her racism as bad were pretty racist in and of themselves. The super racist off screen character (as this is being related third hand) was a servant who didn't want a Black man in her house because his mere presence would make it dirty. He was a priest btw (and literally the day after reading it I saw a GOP candidate saying the exact same thing about refugees from Afghanistan so we haven't come far in a century. Sigh).
That aside, this is very overwritten and slow. (at one point one character spends six pages agonizing over should she give a clue to Lord Wimsey or not, a clue that would crack the case, or should she burn it because she found it in a church and it wouldn't be right to read the postcard. A line or two would have been fine. SIX pages and this happens repeatedly droning on and on about nothing). This would have been better a novella or a screenplay or at least severely edited.
It opens with Peter meeting a doctor at a club and the man tells him about being driven out of town by daring to do an autopsy on an old woman dying of cancer who he thinks died prematurely leaving everything to her great niece Miss Whittaker. Miss Dawson shouldn't have died so soon he thinks but the town sides with the niece especially after his autopsy finds nothing. Peter believes him (while his police buddy Parker does not). Some of the things the niece did prior to her aunt's death does seem shady.
People inside the house at the time have also come to unusual ends and then we have an inheritance act that would take affect in 1926 that might disinherit the niece if the aunt doesn't make a will (and she won't) so Auntie must die in 1925 which surprise, she does.
So the idea behind the mystery is a good one and if this had been a little shorter and tighter it would have worked better. Much of the information is given to Peter via letters from his spy Miss Climson who capitalized and italicizes words at random to the point of madness. I was amused that one of my least favorite murder tropes of TV cop shows (because it's rarely done right) was the murder weapon here so a century of this tired old chestnut. At least it was new when Sayers did it.
Had this been my first Wimsey book it probably would have been my last.
That aside, this is very overwritten and slow. (at one point one character spends six pages agonizing over should she give a clue to Lord Wimsey or not, a clue that would crack the case, or should she burn it because she found it in a church and it wouldn't be right to read the postcard. A line or two would have been fine. SIX pages and this happens repeatedly droning on and on about nothing). This would have been better a novella or a screenplay or at least severely edited.
It opens with Peter meeting a doctor at a club and the man tells him about being driven out of town by daring to do an autopsy on an old woman dying of cancer who he thinks died prematurely leaving everything to her great niece Miss Whittaker. Miss Dawson shouldn't have died so soon he thinks but the town sides with the niece especially after his autopsy finds nothing. Peter believes him (while his police buddy Parker does not). Some of the things the niece did prior to her aunt's death does seem shady.
People inside the house at the time have also come to unusual ends and then we have an inheritance act that would take affect in 1926 that might disinherit the niece if the aunt doesn't make a will (and she won't) so Auntie must die in 1925 which surprise, she does.
So the idea behind the mystery is a good one and if this had been a little shorter and tighter it would have worked better. Much of the information is given to Peter via letters from his spy Miss Climson who capitalized and italicizes words at random to the point of madness. I was amused that one of my least favorite murder tropes of TV cop shows (because it's rarely done right) was the murder weapon here so a century of this tired old chestnut. At least it was new when Sayers did it.
Had this been my first Wimsey book it probably would have been my last.
I liked Miss Climpson. I hope we see more of her in future books.
dark
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:
Complicated
"Murder's so easy, Charles, so damned easy—even without special training."
"I would not recommend a bowler, my lord. The anxiety expressed in a bowler hat would be rather of the financial kind."
"Now it is easy to be mistake in faces, but almost impossible not to recognise a back."
"It's a silly kind of face, of course, but rather disarming, don't you think? I don't know that I'd have chosen it, but I do my best with it. I do hope it isn't contracting a sleuth-like expression, or anything unpleasant. This is the real sleuth—my friend Detective-Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard. He's the one who really does the work. I make imbecile suggestions and he does the work of elaborately disproving them. Then, by a process of elimination, we find the right explanation, and the world says, 'My god, what intuition that young man has!'"
"Miss Climpson," said Lord Peter, "is a manifestation of the wasteful way in which this country is run. Look at electricity. Look at water-power. Look at the tides. Look at the sun. Millions of power units being given off into space every minute. Thousands of old maids, simply bursting with useful energy, forced by our stupid social system into hydros and hotels and communities and hostels and posts as companions, where their magnificent gossip-powers and units of inquisitiveness are allowed to dissipate themselves or even become harmful to the community, while the ratepayers' money is spent on getting work for which these women are providentially fitted, inefficiently carried out by ill-equipped policeman like you."
"There's such a sinister charm, don't you think, about lawyers who appear unexpectedly with little bags, and alarm people with mysterious conferences, and then go away leaving urgent messages that if anything happens they are to be sent for."
"Read any newspaper today....Wouldn't they give you the idea that marriage is a failure? Isn't the sillier sort of journalism packed with articles to the same effect? And yet, looking round among the marriages you know of personally, aren't the majority of them a success, in a humdrum, undemonstrative sort of way? Only you don't hear of them. People don't bother to come into court and explain that they dodder along very comfortably on the whole, thank you. Similarly, if you read all the books on this shelf, you'd come to the conclusion that murder was a failure. But bless you, it's always the failures that make the noise. Successful murderers don't write to the papers about it. They don't even join an imbecile symposia to tell an inquisitive world 'What Murder means to me,' or 'How I became a Successful Poisoner.' Happy murderers, like happy wives, keep quiet tongues."
"I would not recommend a bowler, my lord. The anxiety expressed in a bowler hat would be rather of the financial kind."
"Now it is easy to be mistake in faces, but almost impossible not to recognise a back."
"It's a silly kind of face, of course, but rather disarming, don't you think? I don't know that I'd have chosen it, but I do my best with it. I do hope it isn't contracting a sleuth-like expression, or anything unpleasant. This is the real sleuth—my friend Detective-Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard. He's the one who really does the work. I make imbecile suggestions and he does the work of elaborately disproving them. Then, by a process of elimination, we find the right explanation, and the world says, 'My god, what intuition that young man has!'"
"Miss Climpson," said Lord Peter, "is a manifestation of the wasteful way in which this country is run. Look at electricity. Look at water-power. Look at the tides. Look at the sun. Millions of power units being given off into space every minute. Thousands of old maids, simply bursting with useful energy, forced by our stupid social system into hydros and hotels and communities and hostels and posts as companions, where their magnificent gossip-powers and units of inquisitiveness are allowed to dissipate themselves or even become harmful to the community, while the ratepayers' money is spent on getting work for which these women are providentially fitted, inefficiently carried out by ill-equipped policeman like you."
"There's such a sinister charm, don't you think, about lawyers who appear unexpectedly with little bags, and alarm people with mysterious conferences, and then go away leaving urgent messages that if anything happens they are to be sent for."
"Read any newspaper today....Wouldn't they give you the idea that marriage is a failure? Isn't the sillier sort of journalism packed with articles to the same effect? And yet, looking round among the marriages you know of personally, aren't the majority of them a success, in a humdrum, undemonstrative sort of way? Only you don't hear of them. People don't bother to come into court and explain that they dodder along very comfortably on the whole, thank you. Similarly, if you read all the books on this shelf, you'd come to the conclusion that murder was a failure. But bless you, it's always the failures that make the noise. Successful murderers don't write to the papers about it. They don't even join an imbecile symposia to tell an inquisitive world 'What Murder means to me,' or 'How I became a Successful Poisoner.' Happy murderers, like happy wives, keep quiet tongues."
Läs min recension på bloggen: https://www.fiktiviteter.se/2023/05/23/unnatural-death-av-dorothy-sayers/
I loved the plot! One of the main characters ends up being something I hadn't thought of!
emotional
informative
mysterious
relaxing
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
On the plus side, this mystery introduces Miss Climpson, Sayers’s version of Miss Marple who turns up occasionally in subsequent books for undercover assignments Lord Peter can’t believably do. She’s fine. The mystery itself is a bit drawn out and convoluted and possibly unrealistic (?) but the main, unfortunate, weak point of this novel is a plot point that, while not specifically based on racism, allows several characters to reveal racist views that, while probably typical of the historical era, are still ugly.
Content Warnings
Minor: Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Lesbophobia, Toxic friendship, Injury/Injury detail