Alas, I have been diverted from my journey through Dorothy Sayers' opus, not that I haven't been reading (I have), just not keeping up with Sayers or my posts. I do intend to catch up--eventually. What diverted me, you might wonder: well, first there was Benjamin Black's "Death in Summer." I will be writing about that shortly. Then there was Sonia Sotomayor's new memoir about growing up in Fort Apache (the East Bronx projects) and how she got through Princeton, and Yale, to her first seat on the seat on the Federal bench. Wow! I may write about that one for Goodreads as it's somewhat off program here. And then there was John Grisham's first (and, he claims, favorite) novel, "A Time to Kill,"
which is quite different (slower) than the thrillers he's known for now--quite an interesting book, especially for a new mystery writer like me. I enjoyed it quite a bit; it even kept me up until two one morning determined to get to the end. Perhaps I'll do a post on that one too. And now, I'm reading Iain Pear's "Dream of Scipio"--slow to start, but improving now that I've gotten the hang of the triple plot scheme. There's more of course (I read a lot), some of it history related to our up-coming travels; probably not good material for this particular blog. Now, however, I need to say something about Ms. Sayers' five herrings.
Well....everyone who reads mysteries knows about red herrings. Please tuck your tongues firmly into a cheek: in this book Lord Peter (sans Harriet--she's not even mentioned) heads for Scotland, where fishing and golf dominate ordinary life--or so we are to believe.
"Did you hear aboot Mr. Campbell?" said Mr. Murdoch of the McClellan Arms, polishing a glass carefully as a preparation for filling it with beer.
"Why, what further trouble has he managed to get into since last night?" asked Wimsey. He leaned an elbow on the bar and prepared to relish anything that might be offered to him.
"He's deid," said Mr. Murdoch.
"Deid?" said Wimsey, startled into unconscious mimicry.
Mr. Murdoch nodded.
"Och, ay; McAdam's juist brocht the news in from Gatehouse. They found the body at 2 o'clock up in the hills by Newton-Stewart."
Not only is there no Harriet, but also there's a lot of dialect, so be warned. My favorite being "M'imph'm," which occurs frequently, though I'm not sure what it means. A belch ? Anyway our victim is a nasty, ill-tempered painter who cultivates enemies, so there are, as you might suppose, many (six to be exact) suspects as well as three Keystone-ish cops and Lord ("Bertie") Wimsey doing his Sherlockian thing, monitoring the local gossip, interviewing all and sundry, and putting together a complicated grid of evidence that's quite impossible to follow. It's all about bikes and train schedules as well as voluminous and contradictory details as people run around in the dark (rather like "Clouds of Witness" in that). Everyone lies, so a scorecard is definitely in order. Much foolishness of the usual sort. A jolly romp, written according to Sayers to please her Scottish summer landlord--"all the places are real places and all the trains are real trains, and all the landscapes are correct, except that I have run up a few new houses here and there...."
Well....everyone who reads mysteries knows about red herrings. Please tuck your tongues firmly into a cheek: in this book Lord Peter (sans Harriet--she's not even mentioned) heads for Scotland, where fishing and golf dominate ordinary life--or so we are to believe.
"Did you hear aboot Mr. Campbell?" said Mr. Murdoch of the McClellan Arms, polishing a glass carefully as a preparation for filling it with beer.
"Why, what further trouble has he managed to get into since last night?" asked Wimsey. He leaned an elbow on the bar and prepared to relish anything that might be offered to him.
"He's deid," said Mr. Murdoch.
"Deid?" said Wimsey, startled into unconscious mimicry.
Mr. Murdoch nodded.
"Och, ay; McAdam's juist brocht the news in from Gatehouse. They found the body at 2 o'clock up in the hills by Newton-Stewart."
Not only is there no Harriet, but also there's a lot of dialect, so be warned. My favorite being "M'imph'm," which occurs frequently, though I'm not sure what it means. A belch ? Anyway our victim is a nasty, ill-tempered painter who cultivates enemies, so there are, as you might suppose, many (six to be exact) suspects as well as three Keystone-ish cops and Lord ("Bertie") Wimsey doing his Sherlockian thing, monitoring the local gossip, interviewing all and sundry, and putting together a complicated grid of evidence that's quite impossible to follow. It's all about bikes and train schedules as well as voluminous and contradictory details as people run around in the dark (rather like "Clouds of Witness" in that). Everyone lies, so a scorecard is definitely in order. Much foolishness of the usual sort. A jolly romp, written according to Sayers to please her Scottish summer landlord--"all the places are real places and all the trains are real trains, and all the landscapes are correct, except that I have run up a few new houses here and there...."