The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy Sayers

[keilexandra]

The Nine Tailors
by Dorothy Sayers
397 pages (trade paperback)
Genre: Fiction/Mystery/Historical

In The Nine Tailors, Lord Peter Wimsey visits a small village called Fenchurch St. Paul. A mystery is afoot, of course. The bells, to whom the title refers, play a major role that I didn't "get" until the second last page of the book, and even then I

Comments

[inkylj]

Hmm, I think I disagree with the other folks in the thread (except mrissa's clarification of the noir thing). I don't think this is one of the weaker books in the series (on the contrary, I think it's one of the better ones), but I also think it stands alone pretty well -- there aren't a lot of long-running plot threads or recurring characters that come up in it.

That said, Sayers has a couple of different themes that show up in the Lord Peter books, and this one is basically all The English Countryside with no real snappy dialogue or romance or academics or writing life or action themes to break it up. (I guess writing life comes up a bit with that one girl, but it's pretty minor.) It's conceivable that you might like prefer Strong Poison (which kicks off the romance theme) or Murder Must Advertise (which is mostly dark-edged office comedy) or the short stories collected in Lord Peter (which run the gamut, but are mostly action and comedy).

Finally, re the ending: I see this straight dope article suggesting it's pretty implausible, which doesn't really surprise me (I guess it may have been less-disproved at the time Sayers was writing, though). Sayers does enough realistic stuff with characters that it's easy to miss her being sensationalist; there's a famous scene where Peter stands on top of one of those statue-spurting-water fountains and dives into the pool without breaking his neck, and another where he really does break his neck (well, his collarbone) and is up and active a day or two later.

[keilexandra]

My friend did break his collarbone over a weekend and seemed fine on Monday, but he also had the benefit of modern medicine, an ER, and an immobilizing sling.

I'm not fond of The English Countryside, generally speaking. My favorite part of THE NINE TAILORS was the cryptography section; does Sayer revisit that theme?

[inkylj]

Uh, maybe. Depending on what you liked about it. There's a short story involving solving a cryptic crossword which has the actual crossword included, but I imagine that's a little too on-the-nose. Murder Must Advertise (a novel) has an extended thread about tracking down just how somebody at the advertising agency is signaling to the members of a cocaine-smuggling ring, and there's another short story involving infiltrating a gang that has a bunch of cloak-and-dagger stuff. Any of those like what you're looking for?

What I like about Sayers is the plotting and deduction are both Christie-solid, but the characters are like actual people instead of tokens for the current mystery (also there are a lot of funny bits, though not really quotably funny). But if the characters don't do much for you then I imagine this isn't really an advantage over Christie.

[keilexandra]

The cryptic crossword story sounds very cool, but short stories are so hard to track down. I will add MURDER MUST ADVERTISE to my TBR list, for when I come back to mysteries.

I didn't find NINE TAILORS particularly witty (although I'm a fan of dry wit in general), so maybe I'm just bouncing off Sayers's style.

[inkylj]

All the short stories are collected as Lord Peter, so possibly you'll want to add that to the to-read-later list also.