1923 mystery, first of Sayers' books about Lord Peter Wimsey. A body
is found in a bath in Battersea, naked except for a pair of gold
pince-nez; and a prominent financier has disappeared from his bed.
Unless they're the same man, the cases don't appear to be connected,
but Wimsey the amateur sleuth takes an interest in both ends of the
affair.
I had read this book before, and remembered the outline of the
murder; but I had forgotten how much fun as well as how much
seriousness Sayers packs round the skeleton of the investigation. The
characterisation of Wimsey here owes a great deal to Wodehouse's silly
young men, but the reader is made firmly aware that it's all an act;
it becomes clear that he had a bad time in the War and afterwards, and
that his hobby of sleuthing is in large part a form of therapy (and
brings with it its own mental risks when it collides with reality).
"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
to-morrow!' 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."
Sayers plays scrupulously fair with clues (indeed, the early chapters
give all the information that's really needed), and there's a
well-signposted moment for the reader to stop and evaluate their own
deductions. As a technical mystery, this does everything right, even
if it's not as challenging as some; there's a fairly small array of
suspects, and as readers we know it has to be someone we've met.
As a story about people, it also does most things right. To a modern
reader there are some antisemitic moments, but very much less so than
in other popular writing of the 1920s; rather than the usual
defamation, the attitude is mostly the idea that Jews are different
from "us". Apart from that, there are well-observed characters and
good interactions between them; the methods of murder and concealment
are consistent with the established villainous character; even the
full revelation of the plot is done in a way that is entirely
appropriate to the nature of the criminal.
It's a first novel, but I think it's a decent introduction to the
series. People who are determined to find and be put off by snobbery
can do that here rather than wasting their time with longer, later
books.
Bunter: These great men have their own way of doing things.
Cummings: Well, all I can say is, it isn't my way.
(I could believe that, your lordship. Cummings has no signs of
greatness about him, and his trousers are not what I would wish to
see in a man of his profession.)
Followed by Clouds of Witness.
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