4 May, 2002
Lord Peter
Dorothy L. Sayers
1972
487 pp. (TPB)
I'm beginning to think that Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey stories just don't completely work for me. This is something of a disappointment, because so many people with good taste love them so much. I really expected to like them better than I actually do, and it's frustrating, since I can see how I might have liked them, had Sayers taken a different tack with the same basic material.
This book is a compendium of all twenty-one of Sayers' short stories featuring the noble detective. (She also wrote 14 novels or so.) On the basis of these stories, and the two novels I've read (Strong Poison and Clouds of Witness, I think that the novel was Sayer's stronger format by far. The stories in this volume are a very mixed bag. There are a few good, well-constructed detective stories (e.g. "In the Teeth of the Evidence"), more than a few where Wimsey pulls the solution to the crime out of his butt (e.g. "The Fantastic Horror of the Cat in the Bag") or uses obscure knowledge not available to the reader (e.g. "The Bibulous Business of a Matter of Taste"), a couple which are pure gimmicks (e.g. "The Fascinating Problem of Uncle Meleager's Will," in which the "mystery" mainly serves as a framing device for a complicated crossword puzzle Sayers came up with), a few which aren't mysteries at all, just straight-up adventure stories ("The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba" and "The Incredible Elopement of Lord Peter Wimsey"), and one family vignette ("Talboys"), in which Sayers cheerfully advocates beating one's children-- ah, how times have changed. (The ones I liked best were the adventure stories, and "In the Teeth of the Evidence" which revolves around the use of dental records to identify a dead body.)
On the basis of these stories alone, one could easily come to the conclusion that Wimsey is a Munchkin character. He never makes a wrong move, he usually figures out the mystery on the first try, he manifests expertise in a disparate range of areas (wine-tasting, slight-of-hand tricks, disguise, pistol-shooting, observation, etiquette, and so on), he's fabulously rich, and in all 487 pages of this book, he experiences difficulty exactly once. I don't dismiss him entirely, only because he isn't so munchkin-y in the novels. There, he does experience setbacks and problems in the course of investigating his cases, which makes for a much more interesting reading experience.
As I've noted before, the things which really prevent me from appreciating these stories are the setting and tone. They were written (and are set) during the 1920s and 1930s, after the First World War, but before the Second, and center around the British upper classes. The modern world was beginning to take hold, but the old world order had not yet been killed off by WWII. To me, the Wimsey stories are really bogged down by the impending obsolescence of the British nobility.
In addition to the 21 Wimsey stories, this omnibus also includes a fawning introduction which summarizes the entire series of novels, a biographical/litcrit essay about Ms. Sayers, and a weird little parody story. The essay, "Sayers, Lord Peter, and God," by Carolyn Heilbrun, is not the most intellectual thing I've ever read-- the author's utter admiration for the Wimsey stories is apparent-- but it does shed some light on why they don't quite work for me. According to the essay, Sayers intended her novels to be "comedies of manners," as well as detective novels. Indeed, it's the "comedy of manners" aspect which I have problems with. It's too accepting of the old-time British class system, where the lower classes are held to a different standard than the upper, and are considered to be, literally, worth less than the snobby toffs with their stately homes and private clubs.[1] As a good egalitarian American, the whole setup rubs me wrong. The essayist, IMO, gives Sayers a bit to much credit, in some areas: "Sherlock Holmes apart, Lord Peter alone [of all fictional detectives] continues to sell by the thousands." Um, what about Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot? Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlow? Granted, the essay dates from 1974, but I'm pretty sure those guys sold well during the 60s and 70s, as well as today. "Sayers's plots were absolutely sound, fair to the reader...." I haven't read the novels extensively, but the short stories were definitely not all "fair" mysteries.
So, anyway, I'll probably read more Wimsey-- they're not as good as I'd been led to believe, but they're still amusing enough for when I'm in the mood for a mystery, but want something lighter than Chandler or MacDonald. But, I'll get them from the library. (Truth be told, I only bought this one because it was incredibly cheap, and I have a hard time resisting a bargain!)
[1] This attitude is not inherent to the "Comedy of Manners" genre, but it seems part and parcel of Sayers' take on it.