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In the debut mystery in Dorothy L. Sayers's acclaimed Lord Peter Wimsey series, the case of a dead bather draws Lord Peter into the 1st of many puzzling mysteries Lord Peter Wimsey spends his days tracking down rare books, and his nights hunting killers. Though the Great War has left his nerves frayed with shellshock, Wimsey continues to be London's greatest sleuth--and he's about to encounter his oddest case yet. A strange corpse has appeared in a suburban architect's bathroom, stark naked save for an incongruous pince-nez. When Wimsey arrives on the scene, he is confronted with a once-in-a-lifetime puzzle. The police suspect that the bathtub's owner is the murderer, but Wimsey's investigation quickly reveals that the case is much stranger than anyone could have predicted. Published in 1923, during detective fiction's Golden Age, Whose Body? introduced a character and a series that would make Dorothy L. Sayers famous. To this day, Lord Peter remains 1 of the genre's most beloved and brilliant characters. Whose Body? is the 1st book in the Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries, but you may enjoy the series by reading the books in any order. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Dorothy L. Sayers including rare images from the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College.… (més)
casvelyn: Lord Peter Wimsey and Bertie Wooster are rather similar characters, and they both have loyal and competent valets. Peter, of course, solves mysteries, while Bertie is more of a comic figure.
themulhern: The med school student Lord Peter interviewed could just as well have been C. S. Forester himself (before he dropped out of med school and became a novelist).
Warning: this review contains spoilers (discussion of how the identity of the murderer is revealed).
****
As far as openings to cases go, this one is a doozy: a body wearing only a pair of pince-nez is found in the bathtub of a man in Battersea. Nobody knows whose body this is. Enter Lord Peter Wimsey, who solves mysteries as an amateur with a bit of assistance from his friend Parker, who works for Scotland Yard, and a lot more assistance from his valet, Bunter.
This is the debut for Lord Peter and sets up the family situation, the crime-solving dynamic, and the narrative style. Sayers writes as though she is Wimsey’s biographer, providing a few extra footnotes about his story. The edition I read seemed to have been reprinted at least after Strong Poison, because it contained an introductory note from Lord Peter’s uncle that referenced events from books up to that point in the series.
The mystery itself is fine, but because Parker is investigating the disappearance of a Jewish financier, there are some antisemitic comments, more at the beginning of the book than at the end. The reveal of the murderer is fair enough, I suppose; the identity might be easy to work out but the finer details might have to wait for the full confession provided at the end (reproduced verbatim).
This is actually the fourth Lord Peter Wimsey book I’ve read, but the first in the series. So I personally have no problem with reading this series a bit out of order :)
Bonus info: Lord Peter lunches at the Cathedral Hotel in Salisbury in this book. I stayed at this hotel in 2015 and saw the blue plaque installed at the hotel to commemorate Lord Peter’s visit. ( )
One of my favorite series, but this first one had some beginner flaws such as too much exposition. Still, love the characters and can't wait to see them develop. ( )
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To M. J. Dear Jim: This book is your fault. If it had not been for your brutal insistence, Lord Peter would never have staggered through to the end of the enquiry. Pray consider that he thanks you with his accustomed suavity. Yours ever, D. L. S.
Primeres paraules
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'Oh damn!' said Lord Peter Wimsey at Piccadilly Circus.
Citacions
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"Look here, Peter," said the other [Parker] with some earnestness, "Suppose you get this playing-fields-of-Eton complex out of your system once and for all. There doesn't seem to be much doubt that something unpleasant has happened to Sir Reuben Levy. Call it murder, to strengthen the argument. If Sir Reuben has been murdered, is it a game? and is it fair to treat it as a game?" "That is what I'm ashamed of, really," said Lord Peter. "It IS a game to me, to begin with, and I go on cheerfully, and then I suddenly see that somebody is going to be hurt, and I want to get out of it." (Chapter VII, Leipzig: The Albatross 1938, p. 176)
"There's nothing you can't prove if your outlook is sufficiently limited."
"But when you can really investigate, Mr. Parker, and break up the dead, or for preference the living body with the scalpel, you always find the footmarks---the little train of ruin or disorder left by madness or disease or drink or any other similar pest. But the difficulty is to trace them back, merely by observing the surface symptoms---the hysteria, crime, religion, fear, shyness, conscience, or whatever it may be; just as you observe a theft or a murder and look for the footsteps of the criminal, so I observe a fit of hysterics or an outburst of piety and hunt for the little mechanical irritation which has produced it."
"All these men work with a bias in their minds, one way or another," he said; "they find what they are looking for."
"Yes, yes, I know," said the detective, "but that's because you're thinking about your attitude. You want to be consistent, you want to look pretty, you want to swagger debonairly through a comedy of puppets or else to stalk magnificently through a tragedy of human sorrows and things. But that's childish. If you've any duty to society in the way of finding out the truth about murders, you must do it in any attitude that comes handy. You want to be elegant and detached? That's all right, if you find the truth out that way, but it hasn't any value in itself, you know. You want to look dignified and consistent---what's that got to do with it? You want to hunt down a murderer for the sport of the thing and then shake hands with him and say, 'Well played---hard luck---you shall have your revenge tomorrow!' Well, you can't do it like that. Life's not a football match. You want to be a sportsman. You can't be a sportsman. You're a responsible person."
"I don't think you ought to read so much theology," said Lord Peter. "It has a brutalizing influence."
Mind and matter were one thing, that was the theme of the physiologist. Matter could erupt, as it were, into ideas. You could carve passions in the brain with a knife. You could get rid of imagination with drugs and cure an outworn convention like a disease. "The knowledge of good and evil is an observed phenomenon, attendant upon a certain condition of the brain cells, which is removable." That was one phrase; and again:
"Conscience in man may, in fact, be compared to the sting of a hive-bee, which, so far from conducing to the welfare of its possessor, cannot function, even in a single instance, without occasioning its death. The survival-value in each case is thus purely social; and if humanity ever passes from its present phase of social development into that of a higher individualism, as some of our philosophers have ventured to speculate, we may suppose that this interesting mental phenomenon may gradually cease to appear; just as the nerves and muscles which once controlled the movements of our ears and scalps have, in all save a few backward individuals, become atrophied and of interest only to the physiologist.
He remembered quite suddenly, how, years ago, he had stood before the breakfast table at Denver Castle---a small, peaky boy in blue knickers, with a thunderously beating heart. The family had not come down; there was a great silver urn with a spirit lamp under it, and an elaborate coffee-pot boiling in a glass dome. He had twitched the corner of the tablecloth---twitched it harder, and the urn moved ponderously forward and all the teaspoons rattled. He seized the tablecloth in a firm grip and pulled his hardest---he could feel now the delicate and awful thrill as the urn and the coffee machine and the whole of a Sevres breakfast service had crashed down in one stupendous ruin---he remembered the horrified face of the butler, and the screams of a lady guest.
Lord Peter is not without authority for his opinion: "With respect to the alleged motive, it is of great importance to see whether there was a motive for committing such a crime, or whether there was not, or whether there is an improbability of its having been committed so strong as not to be overpowered by positive evidence. But if there be any motive that can be assigned, I am bound to tell you that the inadequacy of that motive is of little importance. We know, from the experience of criminal courts, that atrocious crimes of this sort have been committed from very slight motives; not merely from malice and revenge, but to gain a small pecuniary advantage, and to drive off for a time pressing difficulties." --- L. C. J. Campbell, summing up in Reg. v. Palmer, Shorthand Report, p.308 C. C. C. May, 1856, Sess. Pa. 5. (Italics mine. D. L. S.)
Lord Peter settled down to a perusal of his Dante. It afforded him no solace. Lord Peter was hampered in his career as a private detective by a public-school education. Despite Parker's admonitions, he was not always able to discount it. His mind had been warped in its young growth by "Raffles" and "Sherlock Holmes" or the sentiments for which they stand. He belonged to a family which had never shot a fox.
"I am an amateur", said Lord Peter.
The really essential factors of success in any undertaking are money and opportunity, and as a rule, the man who can make the first can make the second.
Darreres paraules
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"On no account," said Lord Peter, "would I deprive myself of the pleasure of Mrs. Thipps's company. Bunter!"
In the debut mystery in Dorothy L. Sayers's acclaimed Lord Peter Wimsey series, the case of a dead bather draws Lord Peter into the 1st of many puzzling mysteries Lord Peter Wimsey spends his days tracking down rare books, and his nights hunting killers. Though the Great War has left his nerves frayed with shellshock, Wimsey continues to be London's greatest sleuth--and he's about to encounter his oddest case yet. A strange corpse has appeared in a suburban architect's bathroom, stark naked save for an incongruous pince-nez. When Wimsey arrives on the scene, he is confronted with a once-in-a-lifetime puzzle. The police suspect that the bathtub's owner is the murderer, but Wimsey's investigation quickly reveals that the case is much stranger than anyone could have predicted. Published in 1923, during detective fiction's Golden Age, Whose Body? introduced a character and a series that would make Dorothy L. Sayers famous. To this day, Lord Peter remains 1 of the genre's most beloved and brilliant characters. Whose Body? is the 1st book in the Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries, but you may enjoy the series by reading the books in any order. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Dorothy L. Sayers including rare images from the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College.
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