troisoiseaux | Entries tagged with dorothy sayers

Wrapped up my 2022-23 re-read of Dorothy L. Sayers' Peter Wimsey books with The Five Red Herrings (1931) and The Nine Tailors (1934). The Five Red Herrings has a reputation as the weakest Wimsey novel, which I think is because it feels the most like a garden-variety detective story— it hinges on finicky details and none of the characters really stand out; they're just puzzle pieces to be moved around, in a way that even Sayers' minor characters usually aren't. The Nine Tailors, on the other hand, is fantastic. Ridiculously convoluted, but fantastic!

( Spoilers )

Currently reading Since Yesterday: The 1930s in America by Frederick Lewis Allen; published in 1940, this one is (understandably!) more focused on politics (i.e., the U.S. government response to the Great Depression) than his social history of the 1920s, Only Yesterday, and chronological rather than organized into topics. Interesting read, especially having recently visited the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum— it covers a lot of the same ground as the museum, where you literally walk through a timeline of FDR's life and political career.

Read In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden, set in a community of cloistered Benedictine nuns in 1950s-60s England. It technically has a main character - Philippa, a widow who gives up a successful career and comfortable life to become a nun in her 40s - but it's very much a novel about the dynamics of a community, and how that community changes over the years.

Read Whose Body? and Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers, the first two Lord Peter Wimsey books— I haven't been re-reading this series in exact reverse chronological order, but by having started out with the ones I remembered best - the Harriet Vane sequence, Murder Must Advertise - I've more or less gotten that effect, and it's striking how Wimsey develops as a character over the course of the series. Even in the earliest books, though, Wimsey is more of a person than your garden-variety detective-as-stock-character: in his debut, Whose Body?, he frets to discover that he actually quite likes one of his suspects and wouldn't want to see them hang; he suffers from PTSD as a result of his experience in WWI, which Sayers doesn't just tell, but shows.

Anyway, Clouds of Witness turned out to be one of the most fun in this series: it's Sayers' twist on that most classic of British mystery plots, the Murder at a Country House Party; there is an interlude with Socialists, a courtroom drama, and a daring intercontinental flight. Murder Must Advertise is still my favorite of the non-Harriet Vane books (of which Have His Carcase is probably my favorite, although re-reading Busman's Honeymoon left me really impressed) but this one is definitely up there.

Dorothy Sayers' mysteries have turned out to be very apt books to read while studying for my Trusts & Estates exam— in The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, there's ( ... ) and in Unnatural Death, I found myself wondering ( ... )

Unnatural Death is, on its face, a particularly fun mystery, featuring the delightful Miss Climpson* reporting in from an undercover mission amongst the gossips of Leahampton and Wimsey himself slipping into various personas - the irate cousin of Mrs. So-and-so, an anxious father-to-be - calculated to disarm information out of different sources, and ( assorted musings )

* Who further complicates the Miss Marple vs. Miss Silver origin question, as Unnatural Death came out the same year as Christie's first Miss Marple short story (1927) and Patricia Wentworth's first Miss Silver mystery in 1928. Wikipedia says that "Miss Climpson appears in print two years before Agatha Christie's famed spinster detective Miss Marple, leading some scholars to see Sayers' character as an inspiration" (x) but this appears to be counting from the first Marple novel rather than her first appearance in a short story... although, as that was published in December 1927, it does seem like a safe bet that Miss Climpson appeared first...?

- Regeneration by Pat Barker, historical fiction set in a hospital for shellshocked soldiers during WWI— Craiglockhart, a real hospital, and featuring some of its real doctors (W.H.R. Rivers) and patients (Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen). In some ways, it feels like three different stories— it's a workplace drama from Rivers' POV; a philosophical novel from Sassoon's, who has been hospitalized instead of court-martialed after publicly decrying the war; and a wartime romance for two original characters, an officer with working-class roots and a local munitions worker— although that implies a lack of cohesion in the book as a whole, which couldn't be further from the truth. Probably the best book I've read this year.

- The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers, which was interesting to re-read after Regeneration, since the physical and psychological impact of WWI on the young men that fought in it is a significant thread— the struggles of a friend of Wimsey's, whose PTSD and physical disability makes it hard to hold a job, is relevant to the plot, but there's also the passing references to men missing an arm or leg, and the generational divide at the titular veterans' club.* Unlike most of my Sayers re-reads this year, I remembered whodunnit (and a major plot twist), which actually made it more fun to read— ( ... )

- Factory Girls by Michelle Gallen, a coming-of-age novel set in mid-'90s Northern Ireland. In the months leading up to the 1994 ceasefire, 18-year-old Maeve spends the summer working at a local factory as she waits for the exam results she hopes will be her ticket out of town.

Continued my Spring of Sayers with Busman's Honeymoon, which like Gaudy Night feels less like a mystery novel and more like a novel with a mystery in it. In terms of the actual mystery: as per most of these re-reads, I'd completely forgotten whodunnit, but I had been spoiled for the murder weapon by a passing reference in a (I believe?) Ngaio Marsh novel I read last year, so I was just sort of waiting for the Wimseys (!) to figure out how it was used, although as always, I love the teamwork of Peter coming at the question from a detective's angle and Harriet from a detective novelist's. In terms of everything else, I enjoyed both the comedic bits (Miss Twitterton, accidental peeping tom! Bunter and the ruined port!) and the more serious plot thread of Peter and Harriet figuring out who they are to each other, and how to remain themselves, now that they're finally married. Off the top of my head, I can't think of another fictional couple whose relationship is as carefully negotiated, on the page, as theirs?

As a re-read, I can appreciate how much this reads like a bookend to Strong Poison: obviously, in terms of Peter and Harriet's relationship, but more depressingly, as a sort of there but for the grace of god - and Peter's investigative skills - go I of how Harriet's trial and sentence might have gone (badly), and in the return of Peter's WWI-induced PTSD. Which is rather a bleak note to end the series on, so I'm glad I've been reading it out of order.

Earlier this month, I continued my Dorothy L. Sayers re-read with Gaudy Night, which falls into one of my favorite story niches: weird stuff happens at an all-girls school/women's college. In this case, the weird stuff is a series of poison pen letters and acts of sabotage at Harriet Vane's alma mater, which she is asked to investigate. It's kind of an odd book out among the Peter Wimsey novels— for one, it's not a murder mystery, and two, it's very much Harriet's story; Peter just happens to show up in time to figure out whodunnit and wrap up their three-book courtship arc. It's also just kind of odd, full stop, in ways that are mostly a result of the fact it was published in 1935, the past is a different country, etc.

Re-read Murder Must Advertise— one of my favorites of Sayers', featuring Wimsey juggling two simultaneous undercover investigations and the delightfully specific setting of a 1930s advertising agency. I continue to suspect that cricket is a practical joke played by the British on the rest of the world that just got wildly out of hand.

( Read more... )

Strong Poison was the first Dorothy L. Sayers mystery I read, a few years back, but I remembered very little of it, plot-wise, so it was fun to revisit with almost entirely fresh eyes. A collection of very miscellaneous thoughts below the cut!

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Current Music: Flapper Girl - The Lumineers

Being long overdue for a Dorothy L. Sayers re-read, I'd planned to start with Strong Poison, but found myself thwarted by library availability. Instead, read Have His Carcase, which has probably the best opening line in Golden Age murder mystery history: "The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as so many people seem to think, repose upon a manly bosom. Much more efficacious are honest work, physical activity, and the sudden acquisition of wealth." I adore Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, both as detective partners and as romantic ones. I remembered a key detail of the solution from reading this a few years back - ( spoiler! ) - although I'd forgotten whodunnit, so it was fun to catch those clues this time around.

On The Casual Sociopathy of The Traditional Murder Mystery - Should There Be Such A Thing As A "Comfortable" Murder Mystery?

I've had some interesting conversations on Agatha Christie/Dorothy Sayers/Golden Age murder mysteries on here, so I thought I'd share this article. I think the author is a bit harsh on Christie, to be honest, but she makes some legitimate (if depressing) points.

I think the most interesting point was her comparison of Christie and Sayers:

Dorothy Sayers once said, of the comfortable country house mystery versus a book with feeling, “some readers prefer their detective stories to be of this conventional kind … I believe the future to be with those writers who can contrive to strike the note of sincerity and to persuade us that violence really hurts.” Within her writing, she did exactly that. From the Russian dancer duped into believing himself a Romanov and killed, to the glamorous and easily-led Dian de Momerie in Murder Must Advertise, her victims live, and breathe, and demand our sympathy. And so, too, do their killers. A scene I have never forgotten is Lord Peter Wimsey weeping as the time comes for a killer he uncovered to be hanged.

Thoughts?

Recently finished

I enjoyed Ann Leckie’s The Raven Tower, although the fact it was recognizably a retelling of Hamlet while having very, very little to do with the source material, especially character-wise, made for a rather just-left-of-déjà vu-y reading experience. The changes weren’t necessarily a problem – I literally laughed out loud when I recognized the novel’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, because that wasn’t a reveal I was expecting at the end of that particular narrative tangent, and I found myself rooting for Leckie’s Horatio/Ophelia rarepair – but some of them just felt a little too off. The ending, especially.

I was taken completely by surprise by the reveal at the end that ( spoiler. )

I also finished Gingerbread, by Helen Oyeyemi, which is an uncanny and wonderful book. One GoodReads reviewer describes it as “if Murakami had a take on Great Expectations, mixed it with fairytale magic, and sprinkled ‘fucks’ all over it”; my knee-jerk impulse of a comparison is Gabriel Garcia Marquez, specifically the magical-realism and family chronicle aspects of One Hundred Years of Solitutde. Reading it feels like the literary equivalent of floating down the lazy river at a water park: I found myself carried along with the twisting, meandering flow of Oyeyemi’s absolutely gorgeous, unique writing style, and occasionally I’d notice something gobsmackingly weird out of the corner of my eye (child servitude in a gingerbread-themed ~experience~ for rich adults to reconnect with their inner child, with brothel-like undertones, for example; a Greek chorus of opinionated dolls with plants for hands) but it wouldn’t fully register until I’d already been swept around the next corner.

Finally, I just read The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers, which was a very niche and very convoluted murder mystery. I can’t say I actually understand much more about the apparently very complex and surprisingly mathematical process of ringing church bells than when I started the book, but Sayers seemed to be having fun. Not necessarily my favorite of the Lord Peter Wimsey books (to be fair, the absence of Harriet Vane disadvantaged its spot in the running anyway) but an enjoyable read!

As a side note: something I’ve noticed about Golden Age detective fiction – in both Christie’s and Sayers’ novels, anyway – is ( spoiler. ) Thoughts?

Currently reading

I discovered Sam Anderson’s Boom Town, a non-fiction book about Oklahoma City, while scrolling through Libby to see what was both recently added and available, and borrowed it on an impulse that proved to be an extremely good one. So far (~1/3 of the way through) it consists of two parallel narratives: the chaotic founding of Oklahoma City in the late 1880s/early 1890s, and a surprisingly engaging tale of NBA drama in the 2010s. I’ve never given much thought to Oklahoma City (or state, for that matter,) its history, or basketball in general, and I rather suspect that I wouldn’t find them as interesting in the hands of another writer, but Anderson is like that one young, fun teacher you had in high school who made a boring subject one of your favorite classes by sheer force of personality. I love his humor, and he has some fantastic turns of phrase: “Watching him play was like watching the Eiffel Tower breakdance.”

To read next

I am......... generally suspicious of, and inclined to avoid, any and all Ted Bundy-related media, but I listened to the MFM episode a while back and it piqued my interest in Ann Rule’s The Stranger Beside Me, mostly out of morbid curiosity over the coincidence of a crime writer discovering her friend was a serial killer. I finally got my hands on a copy, so that’s next on my list.