The bells....the bells...! (The Nine Tailors - Dorothy L. Sayers)

Member Name: sunmeilan

Product:	The Nine Tailors - Dorothy L. Sayers
Date:	19/05/07 (173 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Entertaining, good plot

Disadvantages: Too much detail about bell-ringing!

When the grave of the local lady of the manor is dug up so that her husband can be buried alongside her, the villagers of Fenchurch St Paul are horrified to find that there is another body in the grave – one that shouldn’t be there. The vicar, who is acquainted with Lord Peter Wimsey, famous for his skills as a detective, calls him in to help solve the mystery.

Lord Peter quickly finds out that not all is as it seems. There is much confusion over the identity of the body, which eventually leads Lord Peter on a trip to France. The theft of an emerald necklace several years before also appears to be tangled up in the crime. Who was the dead man? Lord Peter’s skills are pushed to the limit in this case.

Along with Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers is one of the most famous ‘Queens of Crime’ that became popular in the first half of the twentieth century. Although Sayers’ work is still popular today, she hasn’t quite retained the popularity of Agatha Christie’s work and it is becoming harder to get hold of new copies of her books. Always with an eye for an intricate crime novel, I am, however, still a fan of her work and only wish she had been as prolific as Agatha Christie.

Lord Peter Wimsey is a bit of a posh twit who just happens to fall over murders right, left and centre. Having built a good relationship with the police, he is privy to facts that few others get to hear of, and this helps him with his cases. To a certain extent, I do find him quite annoying as a character; there is something so upper class and perfect about him that I find it hard to like him. Luckily, Sayers’ plots are usually so strong that this doesn’t take too much away from my enjoyment of the books. I do, however, prefer it when Harriet Vane, his eventual wife, is also featured (she isn’t in this one), because she brings a slightly more down to earth feeling that cancels out Lord Peter's perfectness.

The ‘working class’ is represented by Lord Peter’s manservant, Bunter, whom Lord Peter met during the war. Much as I like the concept of Bunter, who is more of a friend to Lord Peter than a servant, he is just a little too rough and ready to be true. I suspect that Sayers, who came from a relatively middle class background, didn’t really know all that many people of the servant class and had to base the character on caricatures.

The story itself is strong and I did really enjoy it. What lets it down though is the constant reference to change ringing – this is all to do with the way in which church bells are rung in a pattern – I found that this was over-complicated and frankly not all that necessary for the story. I tended to find myself skipping these sections. The bells do play an important role in the story, but the details of how they are rung seemed superfluous to me, merely providing yet another excuse to show how clever Lord Peter is.

In case you were wondering, the title of the book refers to the nine times the church bells are rung when a local man dies (women don’t get as many for some reason!).

Along with the constant references to change ringing, some readers are likely to be hampered by the old fashioned turn of phrase that Sayers tends to use. I’ve become accustomed to it over the years, but I can imagine it may put some readers off – and in fact is probably the reason that Sayers’ work has not remained as popular as that of Agatha Christie.

What I do like about the story, apart from the plot, is that it does provide an interesting insight into village life of the time – particularly the social classes. There was very much a hierarchy in that there was a lord of the manor who everyone else bowed and scraped to, then special standing was given to the vicar, the doctor etc. The others were given respect according to their age. I found all this interesting, particularly when comparing it to modern day life. It is not that I approve of the hierarchy; more that I think it is a shame that the respect for others and neighbourliness that exists in this book doesn’t seem to be as obvious today.

Agatha Christie will always be my favourite of the Queens of Crime, but I do like the occasional Dorothy Sayers book and this one is a pretty good example. It has its faults, but basically, the plot is a good one and I really liked the ending, which I defy anyone to guess in advance. If you like crime fiction, you’ll enjoy this.

The book is available from play.com for £5.49. Published by Hodder and Stoughton, it has 299 pages. ISBN: 9780450001000

Summary: A Lord Peter Wimsey novel