bluepigeon 's review for:

The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers

4.0

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A good old-fashioned murder mystery in a small parish in East Anglia in the early nineteen hundreds. The language of the book was a big plus for me, certainly very well-written, witty, and often comical. (uhm, that, on the other hand, was not very well-written...) The only reason I cannot give this mystery of bells a good 5 stars is indeed the bells themselves. I used to have this problem with many books when I was younger, too, for example reading Agatha Cristie or Hemingway, I would always have to skip the "descriptive" parts of the narrative, parts describing a house, church, village, or a complicated action done by one person or several people. In the case of this book, it is the bells and how one rings them alone and more importantly in unison with others. I got to learn terms like change-ringing and belfry and peal and Treble Bob and Grandshire Triples, but I still have no image in my head of how this all would work from the lengthy descriptions in the book. I skipped most of the lengthy ones, because they got my head a-turnin'! There is, of course, a part of the mystery that centers around the change-ringing of bells, so that "clue" I had to just let go of, instead of trying to understand it. So if you are like me, get lost easily when someone says "Just make the first left and then a right and it's on the south side of the street." then you may want to ease up on the change-ringing parts. Other than that, really, the book was a pleasure to read.