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

[meganbmoore]

I'll just say what I said in my post on the book: that I like the series, but this is probably the weakest of the ones I've read.

[keilexandra]

Damnit, I need to subtract books/authors from my TBR list, not add them. :P

[mrissa]

1) I think it makes a huge difference whether you have the character background in this series. Starting at the end is like what papersky says about the story being the shaft of the spear: you can't just poke somebody with a spearpoint and have it work.

2) I can think of very few things less like hard-boiled noir than Dorothy Sayers, so I'd kind of like to know what you think of when you think noir or hard-boiled.

[keilexandra]

1. Hrm.

2. I feel like Sayers is perfectly representative of hard-boiled noir, except that this novel didn't read like a mystery to me--more like a really long vignette in the life of Lord Peter (whom I confess I am not particularly interested in, related to point 1). And hard-boiled noir = mystery in my mind, though that is probably an unfair equation. (It's a funny name, too. Why is the noir hard-boiled?)

[mrissa]

Yah, "hard-boiled noir = mystery" is about as fair as "cyberpunk = speculative fiction." The Hobbit is not cyberpunk, and Dorothy Sayers didn't write noir.

The thing that's hard-boiled is not the noir but the detective. If you label a detective/mystery novel hard-boiled, you've got a detective who is likely to declare that he doesn't take nothin' from nobody, see? and no broad is going to trick him again. He'll come out shooting, dollface, because it's a cold, cruel world out there, and you gotta look out for number one. (Then he will go home and drink a lot and hate himself for it. The male pronoun is deliberately chosen here: there are now female hard-boiled detectives, but it started out very much male and sexist.)

[keilexandra]

Perhaps it should be a one-way arrow. Cyberpunk is part of speculative fiction; If it isn't speculative fiction, can it be cyberpunk? (I am unfamiliar with the subgenre so would not be able to say for sure.) Similarly, I consider "mystery" one perquisite of hard-boiled noir.

Sayers is certainly hard-boiled noir in tone; but how is Lord Peter a hard-boiled detective?

[kate_nepveu]

Also, it's not a historical mystery, in that it was written contemporaneous with the time period it's set in--hence the assumptions.

I love this one for all the characters and the atmosphere, the way it mixes precision and otherworldiness. But it would be a very different experience if you didn't already know and care about Peter.

[keilexandra]

Ah! Sayers was writing in her contemporary time period? Well, that explains some things.

[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

[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.