Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by jenn756
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers
3.0
This is a traditional 1930's murder mystery novel, taken from the `Golden Age’ of crime fiction as they call it. It features Lord Peter Wimsey and a remote Fenlands Village, Fenchurch St Paul where Lord Peter fetches up one New Years Eve (with butler in tow of course). They’re just about to ring the New Year in with an extended peal of bells and the bells do take on their own personality in the book, it’s a classic book if you happen to like bell ringing – and even if you don’t actually. I've always thought the bells on New Years Eve have a timeless antiquity about them, particularly as its midnight at the darkest time of the year and you know people have listened to those same peals for centuries. It really does bring a tingle to the spine and Sayers brings that part of the story to life very well.
Anyway then comes the body in the churchyard and the hunt for his killer. The story is tied up with the mysterious theft of some emeralds twenty years before. The book flounders a little at this point I thought, the character of Lord Peter doesn’t do anything for me, good socialist that I am. All that doffing of caps and yes m’Lord and no m’Lord, and smug superiority…I half expected the criminals to say `It’s a fair cop guv….I’m just a common oik!.. .I’d always avoided Dorothy Sayers books for that reason but I know it’s very much of its time and you can hardly criticise her for being stranded when the national zeitgeist moves on. Its better written than Agatha Christie say, although Christie at her best has more pizzazz than Sayers.
The book has an excellent ending when its connection with the bells is wrapped up neatly. It’s a good description of the desolate fens too, and so timeless it seems that Cromwell’s and the Dutchmen's efforts to drain the fens was almost just round the corner instead of three hundred years previously. Not an area of the country I know at all, should visit one day….
Anyway then comes the body in the churchyard and the hunt for his killer. The story is tied up with the mysterious theft of some emeralds twenty years before. The book flounders a little at this point I thought, the character of Lord Peter doesn’t do anything for me, good socialist that I am. All that doffing of caps and yes m’Lord and no m’Lord, and smug superiority…I half expected the criminals to say `It’s a fair cop guv….I’m just a common oik!.. .I’d always avoided Dorothy Sayers books for that reason but I know it’s very much of its time and you can hardly criticise her for being stranded when the national zeitgeist moves on. Its better written than Agatha Christie say, although Christie at her best has more pizzazz than Sayers.
The book has an excellent ending when its connection with the bells is wrapped up neatly. It’s a good description of the desolate fens too, and so timeless it seems that Cromwell’s and the Dutchmen's efforts to drain the fens was almost just round the corner instead of three hundred years previously. Not an area of the country I know at all, should visit one day….