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Fiction.
Mystery.
HTML: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 sleuthâ??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 Colle… (more)
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).
Whose Body? - Sayers Audio performance by Robert Bathurst 4 stars I read all of Sayer’s mysteries during the 1980’s, long before I began listening to Books on Tape. I’m a true audiobook addict now. I like to reread old favorites with my ears if I can find a good recording. I’ve been disappointed with most of the available audio performances of the Lord Peter Wimsey series. I know Robert Bathurst from his reading of the Inspector Gamache series. I was pleased to see his recent recordings of some early Wimsey books.
It was a good performance. This is the first book of the series, originally published in 1923. As a classic mystery, this book is a standout. Peter Wimsey is a fun character with a cadre of wonderful supporting characters. The plot is twisty and the crime is gruesome without being overly graphic. I have problems with this book, but I remain a Lord Peter fan.
I’m glad that I listened to this book, but I don’t think I’ll reread it again. Sayer’s is probably criticized for this book more than any other. The victim of the horrible crime is a Jew. The text is full of racial stereotypes. Precisely the kind of stereotypes that would have been common in 1923. I think I’ve read a defense of Sayer’s opinions stating that she was not actively anti semitic. (She does have one of her most likable male characters actively courting the victim’s daughter.) I really couldn’t say what I think of the author’s beliefs. I just know that, despite the historical setting of this book, I wasn’t able to ignore casual commentary that is no longer acceptable. ( )
It took me a bit to get into the writing style because I was expecting something similar in tone to Agatha Christie, and the beginning read more like P.G. Wodehouse. The characters gained more depth half-way through the book. Overall, I liked Sayers' detective novel more than what I've read of Christie's, which is an unexpected delight. ( )
It feels a little unpolished, with serrated edges here and there without the Agatha Christie flair, but I suppose that's to be expected with a debut. It is still a shrewdly conceived plot nevertheless, though the conclusion might easily be surmised early (*potential spoiler) on if you pay close attention to what Sayer's has to leave out about the body's appearance (due to censorship), which indefinitely connects the two cases. I had a rough time getting used to Sayer's attempts at Wodehousian dialogue and her brusque descriptions, and I could not help wincing every time the Peter/Bunter duo fell short of the inimitable Jeeves and Wooster. All in all, an average feat by Miss Sayers. ( )
I really didn't care for the book. Lord Peter is an aristocrat who dabbles in mysteries in order to pass the time. The story lost my interest after the first chapter. There was too much superficial "witty" dialogue and not enough character development. ( )
A dead body shows up in a person’s bathtub, it just so happens that that person has connections including to a second son of a duke that has time on his hands and has taken up sleuthing as a hobby. Whose Body? is the first book of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsy series in which the titular character investigates the mysterious body and later a mysterious disappearance as well.
This was a very engaging mystery from the start especially since Sayers close to the beginning either provides information that someone is either a massive red herring or the obvious culprit, but the astute reader to realizes this feels the need keep going to find out which. The main character, Lord Peter Wimsy, is overall a good protagonist to follow and has some very well characterized supporting characters in his butler Bunter and police detective Charles Parker that help to spread the narrative. While there are some characteristics of Lord Peter that I personally is his speech patterns of the stereotypical snotty Englishman especially when talking with other snotty noblemen of his same age, however I like that Sayers in making him a veteran of the Great War—as it was then known—that suffered recurrent bouts of shell shock—a.k.a. PTSD—which over a century later connects this fictional character to our world today. Frankly, the mystery was good, the main character was good, and Sayers writing was good not only making me enjoy this book but also to look out for more Lord Peter books.
Whose Body? is an interesting mystery with a good main character and engaging writing by Dorothy L. Sayers that got me hooked into seeing what future adventures Lord Peter Wimsy has. ( )
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.
First words
'Oh damn!' said Lord Peter Wimsey at Piccadilly Circus.
Quotations
"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.
Last words
"On no account," said Lord Peter, "would I deprive myself of the pleasure of Mrs. Thipps's company. Bunter!"
Fiction.
Mystery.
HTML: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 sleuthâ??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 Colle
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Book description
Lord Peter's erster Fall: Der biedere Mr. Thipps, dem man sicher kein Unrecht tut, wenn man ihn einen Spießer nennt, überrascht eines unschönen Morgens in seiner Badewanne einen sehr toten und sehr unbekleideten Mann. Mr. Thipps beteuert, mit der Sache nicht das geringste zu tun zu haben. Doch hat man nicht schon oft in stillen Wassern Abgründiges entdeckt.
Cover description (1938): This is a Lord Peter Wimsey story. Need we say more? For Lord Peter Wimsey is one of the most attractive detectives of fiction. Nor is it necessary to say (since Dorothy L. Sayers is the author) that while you will enjoy this book as a detective story, you will enjoy it equally for its delightful touches of humour, its clever characterization and attractive style.
Back cover description, Dover Pub ed.: There's a corpse in the bathtub, wearing nothing but a pair of pince-nez spectacles. Enter Lord Peter Wimsey, the original gentleman sleuth. Urged to investigate by his mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver, Lord Peter quickly ascertains that the sudden disappearance of a well-known financier is in some way connected to the body in the bathroom. But discovering exactly which way they're related leads the amateur detective on a merry chase.
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Audio performance by Robert Bathurst
4 stars
I read all of Sayer’s mysteries during the 1980’s, long before I began listening to Books on Tape. I’m a true audiobook addict now. I like to reread old favorites with my ears if I can find a good recording. I’ve been disappointed with most of the available audio performances of the Lord Peter Wimsey series. I know Robert Bathurst from his reading of the Inspector Gamache series. I was pleased to see his recent recordings of some early Wimsey books.
It was a good performance. This is the first book of the series, originally published in 1923. As a classic mystery, this book is a standout. Peter Wimsey is a fun character with a cadre of wonderful supporting characters. The plot is twisty and the crime is gruesome without being overly graphic. I have problems with this book, but I remain a Lord Peter fan.
I’m glad that I listened to this book, but I don’t think I’ll reread it again. Sayer’s is probably criticized for this book more than any other. The victim of the horrible crime is a Jew. The text is full of racial stereotypes. Precisely the kind of stereotypes that would have been common in 1923. I think I’ve read a defense of Sayer’s opinions stating that she was not actively anti semitic. (She does have one of her most likable male characters actively courting the victim’s daughter.) I really couldn’t say what I think of the author’s beliefs. I just know that, despite the historical setting of this book, I wasn’t able to ignore casual commentary that is no longer acceptable. (