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A review by beatitude
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers
3.0
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.