I’ll add a funny story about me and these books. For YEARS, after reading Have His Carcase as a young person, I thought the title was referring to a “Car Case,” which in my mind, was some kind of special ritzy British suitcase that was designed to go in the trunk of a car.
I figured Bunter’s always dealing with all sorts of upperclass luggage for rich people, and a lot of the British words for car-related things sound strange to me anyway, both because they are British, and because I imagine that some of the car vocabulary from the 1920s is dated. Also, the book takes place in a resort, so luggage didn’t seem completely unreasonable.
Obviously, I had never encountered the British spelling of carcass before. When I finally did see it somewhere else, used in a way where the meaning was clear from context, it was a huge :smack: moment for me.
I voted for * Have his Carcase * because of the brilliant acrostic in Peter’s solution, the Harriet and Peter thing, and the medical problem which caused the mystery . As well as the scenic descriptions which were captivating and led to a wish to retrace those steps.
I voted for “Have His Carcase,” but love “Gaudy Night,” “Murder Must Advertise,” and “Nine Tailors” as well. (In fact, I loved the stories so much I annotated most of them.)
What impresses me a lot about her writing is the sheer level of detail she puts into them. Public figures, music-hall songs, detective novelists, politics, philosophy, snippets of French and Greek, classic literature, Bible references. You can learn a lot just trying to hunt down the source of Lord Peter’s remarks. She also crams in details about Britain in the 1920s, the motorcycle craze (the “Cat in the Bag” short story), the growing advertising field, and the challenges women in education face (“Gaudy Night” of course). Even Lord Peter’s Cattery, in which he put spinsters to work as investigators, had a basis in reality, when a great many women saw lovers and potential husbands killed in WWI, and were considered “surplus women” and useless by society.
I really couldn’t see my way to voting: have very great likings for Murder Must Advertise,The Nine Tailors, and The Five Red Herrings – stating a preference for any one of those three, would be beyond me. (TFRH seems something of a minority preference – however, I greatly enjoy the ingenuity of its premise and plotting, and it’s set in a part of Britain which I love.
I can’t join in with the chorus of praise on this thread, for Gaudy Night and Busman’s Honeymoon. To be honest, I dislike Harriet; for me, the series started to go downhill when she showed up. The two books are widely lauded as among the greatest romantic novels of all time – in part, maybe, it’s just that I’m male, without a huge appetite for “gooey lurve stuff”. I struggled through both GN and BH, without enjoying them. Romance-or-not, aside: re GN, I have personal issues to do with Oxford University, which would make my taking pleasure in the book unlikely. BH, I frankly found awful – copious amounts of feeble low comedy among supposedly quaint rustic characters with “comical” names. This novel was very much “not my bag”.
I’m a fan of the Peter/Harriet romance, and I picked Gaudy Night as my favorite. But I have liked all of the books except for The Five Red Herrings - that one bored me a little with all the train timetables.
From author Connie Willis:
“I was on a walking tour of Oxford colleges once with a group of bored and unimpressable tourists. They yawned at Balliol’s quad, T.E. Lawrence’s and Churchill’s portraits, and the blackboard Einstein wrote his E=mc2 on. Then the tour guide said, ‘And this is the Bridge of Sighs, where Lord Peter proposed (in Latin) to Harriet,’ and everyone suddenly came to life and began snapping pictures. Such is the power of books.”
I voted for Murder Must Advertise. I respect Gaudy Night more than I enjoy it. I agree that Wimsey is better without Harriet, although Strong Poison was very well done and is the absolute last word in literary revenge. Sayers cast a former lover in the book, detailed how he done her wrong, and then offed him. It’s beautiful.
I’m a train nut, so loved that part; and that whole rural rail system in south-west Scotland, which was closed down nearly fifty years ago – before I had a chance to experience it first-hand, alas.
Whereas probably I would not just have yawned, but would have thrown up. But that’s “my issue for me to deal with”. I like to think that there’s room in life somewhere, for the seasick sailor; the hit-squad member who faints at the sight of blood; and the Reader Who Hates Harriet Vane – and hates what he sees as Sayers’s affected and conceited throwing around of foreign tongues.
For me it’s Gaudy Night. Because, after several books with Peter pining for Harriet, he finally shows he *respects/I] her. He respects her mind, he respects her bravery. Because of that respect, he expects a great deal from her, none of which is related to romance. It’s what made Harriet fall for him, and I fell for him, too. Before he almost seems like a cartoon character, but he seemed more human in that book.
Glad I’m not totally unique, as a Wimsey-lover-but-non-Harriet-fan. Sayers was daring and unconventional for her time, re dealings between the sexes; if I’m right, had a child out of wedlock, which was a much bigger deal 90-odd years ago, than now. More interestingly still, she was a serious Christian; but vis-a-vis sexual conduct, somehow managed to “make the incompatible twain meet” – not the first or last serious Christian, to have managed that feat. One would suppose that very strictly, as a Christian, she should have forgiven her former lover and not “skewered” him fiction-wise; but as we very frequently hear, “Christians are forgiven, not perfect”. (Maybe if it’s in fiction, it’s OK and off-limits; Messrs. Tolkien and Lewis’s opinions would be interesting to hear.)
I voted for Gaudy Night, because I always fall in love with Peter Wimsey when I read it.
But I agree that The Nine Tailors is a little more interesting (though less emotional) than Gaudy Night. I took a bell ringing class because of The Nine Tailors. All I did because of Gaudy Night was pine for The Perfect Man ™.
The Nine Tailors is still my favorite one. I first “read” it as an audio book - on a long winter night’s drive home for Christmas - and the story really sunk in to me and stayed there. None of her other books have hit me quite the same way. Love that one
It would follow logically. That one begins with Lord Peter and Bunter driving through a snowy countryside on a holiday. Hopefully you didn’t slide off the road because you weren’t paying enough attention to what you were doing.
Murder Must Advertise is the only one I’ve read so far. I decided to buy the ebook after enjoying the radio play so much. I have since also bought Busman’s Honeymoon which is also very enjoyable as a radio play.
I tend to feel a bit the same way as Ulf – I like Wimsey, but would like him more if he were not quite so damned perfect. IMO, in the World War I scenario referred to, he was a heroic fighter who underwent the consequences of same – still totally admirable. I’d feel more drawn to the guy if – for whatever reason – his role in WWI had been an inglorious one. Not, perhaps, being sent to prison as a conscientious objector – that would be a little extreme (though it would probably have given him useful underworld contacts, for his detecting).
He acts it well, but he’s not physically Lord P. I think Edward Petherbridge looks more like my image of what he should look like. Of course, Lord P in the later books does not come across as so frivilous as in the earlier books (with the annoying linguistic fads.)
