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After a corpse wearing pince-nez glasses is found in a bathtub, Lord Peter Wimsey undertakes the case and investigates the deed privately. But determining whether the corpse belongs to a well-known banker or a group of mischief-making medical students is just the beginning of this tangled mystery plot. This atmospheric novel put Dorothy L. Sayers in the ranks with Agatha Christie as a mystery writer nonpareil.… (more)
casvelyn: Lord Peter Wimsey and Bertie Wooster are rather similar characters, and they both have loyal and competent valets. Peter, of course, solves mysteries, while Bertie is more of a comic figure.
themulhern: The med school student Lord Peter interviewed could just as well have been C. S. Forester himself (before he dropped out of med school and became a novelist).
I spotted the overall shape of the crime early (telltale clue: the corpse was shaved and groomed postmortem), but the audio performance and the literary skill were such that in remained rollicking good listen.
I did this as an audio book which I think destroyed it for me. the speech type was already a little off for me, but also some of the lingo. It didn't help that the narrator had a pretty think accent. I think it's probably better on paper, but as an audio, I was lost most of the time and didn't really mind or care. ( )
I haven't read this series in order, and it's a good thing, since this was not my favorite and I might not have read some really good books. The plot was a bit convoluted and unlikely. Lord Peter Wimsey had so many idiosyncrasies that it was hard to get a picture of the character, if this was your first introduction. He is a much fuller character later and more understandable as a person with some quirky attributes. I love his butler and their relationship. ( )
It was written in the 1920s. By a woman. So... Yeah, there are dated concepts (read: racist), but I suppose that is par for the course in its era. The alternative would be to not have early detective fiction written by a woman, so... I had to ignore the jarring I experienced with every racist reference in order to appreciate the difficulty Sayers must have faced in order to write for a living, as a woman, in the early 20th century. I suppose it also mocks British aristocracy ... and the main character (Peter) is a bit of an asshat and, normally, I would not read books with such an asshat main character because I find him so grating. But, again, that's probably partially due to the era, and partially due to Sayers' apparent interest in mockery, which is actually why I could bear to follow the asshat's story at all - because I chose to believe it was written that way intentionally. ( )
I had read the book before but had missed some of the aspects of the Lord Peter Whimsey character, such as his contending with shell-shock. That makes him seem less of a frivolous diletante. ( )
To M. J. Dear Jim: This book is your fault. If it had not been for your brutal insistence, Lord Peter would never have staggered through to the end of the enquiry. Pray consider that he thanks you with his accustomed suavity. Yours ever, D. L. S.
First words
'Oh damn!' said Lord Peter Wimsey at Piccadilly Circus.
Quotations
"Look here, Peter," said the other [Parker] with some earnestness, "Suppose you get this playing-fields-of-Eton complex out of your system once and for all. There doesn't seem to be much doubt that something unpleasant has happened to Sir Reuben Levy. Call it murder, to strengthen the argument. If Sir Reuben has been murdered, is it a game? and is it fair to treat it as a game?" "That is what I'm ashamed of, really," said Lord Peter. "It IS a game to me, to begin with, and I go on cheerfully, and then I suddenly see that somebody is going to be hurt, and I want to get out of it." (Chapter VII, Leipzig: The Albatross 1938, p. 176)
"There's nothing you can't prove if your outlook is sufficiently limited."
"But when you can really investigate, Mr. Parker, and break up the dead, or for preference the living body with the scalpel, you always find the footmarks---the little train of ruin or disorder left by madness or disease or drink or any other similar pest. But the difficulty is to trace them back, merely by observing the surface symptoms---the hysteria, crime, religion, fear, shyness, conscience, or whatever it may be; just as you observe a theft or a murder and look for the footsteps of the criminal, so I observe a fit of hysterics or an outburst of piety and hunt for the little mechanical irritation which has produced it."
"All these men work with a bias in their minds, one way or another," he said; "they find what they are looking for."
"Yes, yes, I know," said the detective, "but that's because you're thinking about your attitude. You want to be consistent, you want to look pretty, you want to swagger debonairly through a comedy of puppets or else to stalk magnificently through a tragedy of human sorrows and things. But that's childish. If you've any duty to society in the way of finding out the truth about murders, you must do it in any attitude that comes handy. You want to be elegant and detached? That's all right, if you find the truth out that way, but it hasn't any value in itself, you know. You want to look dignified and consistent---what's that got to do with it? You want to hunt down a murderer for the sport of the thing and then shake hands with him and say, 'Well played---hard luck---you shall have your revenge tomorrow!' Well, you can't do it like that. Life's not a football match. You want to be a sportsman. You can't be a sportsman. You're a responsible person."
"I don't think you ought to read so much theology," said Lord Peter. "It has a brutalizing influence."
Mind and matter were one thing, that was the theme of the physiologist. Matter could erupt, as it were, into ideas. You could carve passions in the brain with a knife. You could get rid of imagination with drugs and cure an outworn convention like a disease. "The knowledge of good and evil is an observed phenomenon, attendant upon a certain condition of the brain cells, which is removable." That was one phrase; and again:
"Conscience in man may, in fact, be compared to the sting of a hive-bee, which, so far from conducing to the welfare of its possessor, cannot function, even in a single instance, without occasioning its death. The survival-value in each case is thus purely social; and if humanity ever passes from its present phase of social development into that of a higher individualism, as some of our philosophers have ventured to speculate, we may suppose that this interesting mental phenomenon may gradually cease to appear; just as the nerves and muscles which once controlled the movements of our ears and scalps have, in all save a few backward individuals, become atrophied and of interest only to the physiologist.
He remembered quite suddenly, how, years ago, he had stood before the breakfast table at Denver Castle---a small, peaky boy in blue knickers, with a thunderously beating heart. The family had not come down; there was a great silver urn with a spirit lamp under it, and an elaborate coffee-pot boiling in a glass dome. He had twitched the corner of the tablecloth---twitched it harder, and the urn moved ponderously forward and all the teaspoons rattled. He seized the tablecloth in a firm grip and pulled his hardest---he could feel now the delicate and awful thrill as the urn and the coffee machine and the whole of a Sevres breakfast service had crashed down in one stupendous ruin---he remembered the horrified face of the butler, and the screams of a lady guest.
Lord Peter is not without authority for his opinion: "With respect to the alleged motive, it is of great importance to see whether there was a motive for committing such a crime, or whether there was not, or whether there is an improbability of its having been committed so strong as not to be overpowered by positive evidence. But if there be any motive that can be assigned, I am bound to tell you that the inadequacy of that motive is of little importance. We know, from the experience of criminal courts, that atrocious crimes of this sort have been committed from very slight motives; not merely from malice and revenge, but to gain a small pecuniary advantage, and to drive off for a time pressing difficulties." --- L. C. J. Campbell, summing up in Reg. v. Palmer, Shorthand Report, p.308 C. C. C. May, 1856, Sess. Pa. 5. (Italics mine. D. L. S.)
Lord Peter settled down to a perusal of his Dante. It afforded him no solace. Lord Peter was hampered in his career as a private detective by a public-school education. Despite Parker's admonitions, he was not always able to discount it. His mind had been warped in its young growth by "Raffles" and "Sherlock Holmes" or the sentiments for which they stand. He belonged to a family which had never shot a fox.
"I am an amateur", said Lord Peter.
The really essential factors of success in any undertaking are money and opportunity, and as a rule, the man who can make the first can make the second.
Last words
"On no account," said Lord Peter, "would I deprive myself of the pleasure of Mrs. Thipps's company. Bunter!"
After a corpse wearing pince-nez glasses is found in a bathtub, Lord Peter Wimsey undertakes the case and investigates the deed privately. But determining whether the corpse belongs to a well-known banker or a group of mischief-making medical students is just the beginning of this tangled mystery plot. This atmospheric novel put Dorothy L. Sayers in the ranks with Agatha Christie as a mystery writer nonpareil.
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Book description
Lord Peter's erster Fall: Der biedere Mr. Thipps, dem man sicher kein Unrecht tut, wenn man ihn einen Spießer nennt, überrascht eines unschönen Morgens in seiner Badewanne einen sehr toten und sehr unbekleideten Mann. Mr. Thipps beteuert, mit der Sache nicht das geringste zu tun zu haben. Doch hat man nicht schon oft in stillen Wassern Abgründiges entdeckt.
Cover description (1938): This is a Lord Peter Wimsey story. Need we say more? For Lord Peter Wimsey is one of the most attractive detectives of fiction. Nor is it necessary to say (since Dorothy L. Sayers is the author) that while you will enjoy this book as a detective story, you will enjoy it equally for its delightful touches of humour, its clever characterization and attractive style.
Back cover description, Dover Pub ed.: There's a corpse in the bathtub, wearing nothing but a pair of pince-nez spectacles. Enter Lord Peter Wimsey, the original gentleman sleuth. Urged to investigate by his mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver, Lord Peter quickly ascertains that the sudden disappearance of a well-known financier is in some way connected to the body in the bathroom. But discovering exactly which way they're related leads the amateur detective on a merry chase.
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I spotted the overall shape of the crime early (telltale clue: the corpse was shaved and groomed postmortem), but the audio performance and the literary skill were such that in remained rollicking good listen.
On to Clouds of Witness>. (