Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers

[meganbmoore]

After a copywriter working for Pym’s Publicity, Ltd. mysteriously falls down the stairs to his death, a new copywriter named Death Bredon is hired. Bredon is supercilious and his shoes cost more than a copywriter can make in a week, much less a month, and is clearly Lord Peter Wimsey long before we’re told he is. There to investigate the death of

Comments

[meganbmoore]

...

This explains my thinking "I need to catch up with comics" several times as I read. Peter, Mary and Parker are all normal and generally unconnected enough, but once you add in Pym...

[etrangere]

yeah, I found that one to be one of the funniest of those books.

[meganbmoore]

Which is why it's kind of weird that she hated it.

[fmanalyst]

It's one of my favorites, and I'm still very fond of the Ian Carmichael mini=series version from the 70s.

[meganbmoore]

I need to watch those.

[mscongeniality]

I do love Murder Must Advertise. I don't remember the fact that Death Bredon was Lord Peter ever not being clear, but that could just because the middle names thing was so obvious and if you aren't clued in to that I suppose it could be.

At any rate, it's just a great book. Not only is it a fun read, but the central mystery is a good one.

[meganbmoore]

I had forgotten that they were his middle names, but the description made it pretty obvious from thr start.

[lady_ganesh]

Generally, Sayers uses the alias as a tip-in to the rest of us; she does it in one of her short stories too.

[sienamystic]

Murder Must Advertise is one of my favorites. My husband writes copy for radio commercials and frequently has the same complaints about clients and coworkers lo these many years later!

I don't recall hearing that Sayers hated writing it - I think it was actually a lighter book to balance the fact that she was also writing The Nine Tailors at the same time. I have the compilations of her letters, and can check and see if she mentions anything.

[meganbmoore]

The wikipedia article for the book has a letter from her that says that she hated it and wrote it because she wasn't going to finish Nine Tailors in time.