proust_mobile 's review for:

The Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers

3.25

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The main course of this odd entry into the Lord Peter series is the making and breaking of alibis, and to that end five is far too many red herrings. Two would have illustrated the point perfectly well. By meticulously tracing and confirming the movements of so many suspects, this novel is methodical to the point of being tedious, made worse by Lord Peter's frequent absence from his own book.

I love a clever jigsaw of a story, but this ingenious plot was often at the expense of character and emotion, and I found it hard to be invested in the long unbroken passages about train schedules and bicycle availability. However, this does feature Bunter's best showing, and his bizarre, stiff mannerisms add a lot of the typical humor I was missing. The final madcap stretch in which the crime is reconstructed in real time is a great reminder of why I fell in love with these books in the first place, especially because it finally puts Lord Peter's unique brand of bullshit front and center. It's so good it makes this overlong and overcomplicated book worth it.