A review by thecommonswings
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers

5.0

A very suitable book to see out the year, being as it is set at New Years and involves floods on a Boxing Day. Weirdly this is the first Sayers I have ever read, probably because I’m more interested in the weirder byroads of crime fiction and know that the big hitters will always be there and easier to find. Having said that, on the evidence of this I’m going to have a grand old time reading the rest of her books

I knew the solution because I vividly remember a play of it I heard when I was about twelve, but that doesn’t really matter at all. What is so wonderful about the book is that Sayers effectively takes a crime plot and manages to find the realism in it. Wimsey is effectively a Campion from the real world, and the investigation, solution and denouement have a very real lived in quality that other fiction of the era doesn’t have. Now I happen to love the more whimsical and eccentric and camp corners of the genre probably more than this, but it feels like t he naturalistic form of the British crime novel at the apex of its Golden Age form. It’s a beautiful achievement and never takes any short cuts (apart from a really weird sudden moment of anti semitism), instead etching the locals with a real eye to detail and reluctance to indulge in cliches. Similarly, Hilary is a wonderful creation - the first bright teenager in a Golden Age crime novel who hasn’t been a major irritant, no small achievement in a genre stuffed with some awful, awful children