I Read Books: Whose Body

Oh is it huge influence on me (and others) time? I suppose it is. Lord Peter Wimsey, upper class book collector and man about town, is also an amateur detective. When a dead body (naked except for a pair of pince-nez) appears in the bathroom of an architect know to his mother he goes to investigate. Meanwhile a wealthy Jewish financier has mysteriously vanished. Wimsey swiftly determines the body is not Sir Reuben Levy, so whose body is it?

It’s 1923 and Sayers' first detective novel and she’s already having a poke at the tropes (see here and here where I’ve previously talked about her discussion of motive). Wimsey figures out most of the case and then has a breakdown; a recurrence of the shell shock (PTSD) he suffered after the War. It’s one thing to investigate a crime for the challenge of it, another to find that you will be sending a man to the gallows for it.

This is an excellent detective novel from the golden age of detective novels, and in fact Sayers is one of the reasons the golden age of detective novels was golden. Even when it meanders off onto side issues they’re either light and amusing or of real interest. Highly recommended.

Read This: For a really excellent detective novel
Don’t Read This: If you have no interest in murder mysteries.