What Is Your Favorite Lord Peter Novel?

[Patrick Gore]

Vote in the poll and then post your thoughts in this thread. Remember: you're voting for your favorite, not necessarily what you would consider the most important or "best."

Cheers,
Brian

PS: Because the poll limit is 10 options, I had to leave out Busman's Honeymoon, but feel free to post a write-in ballot!

[NBooth]

I'm afraid that my vote won't count for much, as I've only been able to get my hands on three (the first three) Lord Peter books. Of those three, however, my personal favorite was "Unnatural Death." Though the book was written in such a way that the solution would be fairly obvious early on, the character-portraits were terrific, and the "howdunit" element was fairly credible. In all, a most enjoyable novel.

[Dave]

I'm going to have to go with Nine Tailors. It was the first Sayer's book I read so it has a special place in my heart.

[Patrick Gore]

Originally Posted by NBooth

Of those three, however, my personal favorite was "Unnatural Death." Though the book was written in such a way that the solution would be fairly obvious early on, the character-portraits were terrific, and the "howdunit" element was fairly credible. In all, a most enjoyable novel.

If you liked Unnatural Death you will probably like Strong Poison, which it resembles in several significant ways: the emphasis is on howdunit, not whodunit; the characterizations are excellent; and it features the delightful Miss Climpson (who appears in no other novel but these two, to my knowledge). I happen to like Strong Poison even better than Unnatural Death -- it's my 2nd favorite Lord Peter Wimsey novel, after Murder Must Advertise -- though both are delightful.

By the way, it's interesting how no consensus seems to be forming on Sayers's novels. I wonder if we will end up with a clear favorite! Maybe we should try this again with the option to vote for two or three favorites.

Cheers,
Brian

[NBooth]

If you liked Unnatural Death you will probably like Strong Poison

Thanks for the reccomendation; I'll try to find it and check it out.

[stoke_moran]

This is a difficult one. Sayers is my favourite detective writer (yes, even more so than Carr, Christie, Bailey or Chesterton), which is ironic when one considers that, having read most of her works at the age of thirteen (and enjoyed some of them), I came to the conclusion that she was a pretentious, snobbish old harridan. I remember writing: "My next book will be written entirely in Ancient Greek, so that only people of my intellect, few and far between though they are, will be able to understand it" on my notes for one of 'em. Now, though, quite the opposite--I read Murder Must Advertise just after my sixteenth birthday (late 1999) and thoroughly enjoyed it then. (Same thing happened with Innes--I mustn't have been intellectually mature enough for either.)

Rankings (classics in bold):

The Nine Tailors
Murder Must Advertise
Have His Carcase
Unnatural Death
Gaudy Night
The Five Red Herrings
Strong Poison
The Documents in the Case
Busman's Honeymoon
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
Whose Body?
Clouds of Witness

[BlackAdder]

I am re-reading "Whose Body?" at the moment (forgot what forum I posted that on). It is full of lordly mannerisms of the highest Bertie Wooster sort, by Jove, regarding what color socks to wear with this color trousers, and is almost intolerably 'upper-upper' and without humor except perhaps unintentionally -- one can't always tell with Sayers. There is, however, one very good passage, with Inspector Parker chiding his good friend Wimsey. It shows that the author did in fact have some sensitivity. It is worth quoting in full:

"Look here, Peter," said [Parker] with some earnestness, "suppose you get this playing-fields-of-Eton 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's 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."

"Yes, yes, I know," said the detective, "but that's because you're thinking of 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."

Right on, Parker! And Sayers did thenceforth turn Wimsey into less of a pompous twit. By no means, however, is this the best Sayers mystery, it was only the first.

[Xavier Lechard]

Sayers' works are wonderful exercises in gratuitous plotting. My current favorite is Clouds of Witness as it ideally exemplifies her method, that is, intricate plotting for its own sake, with whodunit being quite perfunctory. Not something anybody can achieve, and Sayers deserves much kudos for leading such a radical approach and then never be boring.

[Lirelyn]

Tricky... Strong Poison is probably my favorite as a mystery, but Gaudy Night is my favorite as a book. And Murder Must Advertise runs a close second in either category.

Really need to reread Nine Tailors; I've only read it once.

I'm new here, by the way... very excited to discover that such a forum exists.

[Dave]

Welcome Lirelyn!

[awrobins]

Here are my rankings of favorites-not-necessarily-best:

1. Unnatural Death
2. The Nine Tailors
3. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
4. Strong Poison
5. Murder Must Advertise
6. Gaudy Night
7. Documents in the Case
8. Clouds of Witness
9. Have His Carcase
10. Busman’s Honeymoon
11. Whose Body
12. Five Red Herrings

I’m ambivalent about Sayers—I get annoyed with some aspects of her books, but on the whole I find them very enjoyable. Her characterization on the whole is excellent, but Wimsey himself can be irritating. I like Harriet Vane as a character, but not always the “love interest” between them. I also like Miss Climpson, the Dowager Duchess, and Parker. I think Gaudy Night is a terrific novel except for the weak detective plot, while I like the mystery aspect of Busman’s Honeymoon, but find the rest dull (though I do like the letters at the beginning). The drug subplot of Murder Must Advertise seems to me ludicrous, but the scenes in the advertising agency are great. Also, I like to be kept guessing about the murderer’s identity, but in Sayers, as in Nicholas Blake, it’s usually fairly obvious. Even though I read them as a teenager, I think The Nine Tailors is the only novel where the identity of the culprit(s) surprised me (unless you count Clouds of Witness, which I found anticlimactic). Her erudition can be entertaining when she’s using it for comic effect, but too often she seems to take herself too seriously—surprising for a writer who can be very funny when she chooses. But overall, I enjoy her novels. (As for her short stories… a few are very good, but many are mediocre, some are bizarre, and some, like “The Cave of Ali Baba,” made me wonder “Is this supposed to be a parody?”)

[Patrick Gore]

Originally Posted by awrobins

some, like “The Cave of Ali Baba,” made me wonder “Is this supposed to be a parody?”)

Hee hee. Yes, that story is just plain weird. Not funny enough to be a spoof, but too stupid to be taken seriously. As to the rest of your post, yes, it is kind of strange Sayers tips her hand about the identity of the culprit so early so often by design, as in Strong Poison and Whose Body? and Unnatural Death, where the only real question is either how it was done or how will the person be caught.

(This is different from Blake, who in novels like The Widow's Cruise and There's Trouble Brewing just gives the game away from lack of adroitness.)

I don't remember being especially "surprised" at the end of Nine Tailors because I was too bored with the characters to really develop a theory about them, though the "how" was interesting. But I've long been promising to give that book a fresh read.

Brian

[Mycroft]

Hi,

I was born in '69 and during my early-to late teens (in the 'eighties) I used to devour writers such as Sayers, Carr, Christie, Innes etc. A few years ago I decided to re-read those old favourites (a hard task as a lot of my teenager favourites are out-of-print).

I started re-reading Sayers last summer and so far I have managed to read MURDER MUST ADVERTISE, FIVE RED HERRINGS and STRONG POISON. Of the three I enjoyed HERRINGS the most (it was very readable) followed by ADVERTISE and POISON (while i enjoyed that one it wasn't as good as I remembered).

[Patrick Gore]

Dear Mycroft,

You should cast a vote for Herrings in the poll above!

[Mycroft]

Originally Posted by Patrick Gore

Dear Mycroft,

You should cast a vote for Herrings in the poll above!

True, but I might like the next Sayers book I re-read better!