Harriet Vane's holiday plans most certainly hadn't turned out precisely as she had hoped. She had wanted a quiet holiday hiking along the southwestern coast of England. She had wanted some respite from Lord Peter Wimsey's all-too-regular offers of marriage, a union for which she was most certainly not eager, thank you. She wanted, in short, solitude, relaxation and exercise. She had not bargained for her discovery of the body of a man on an isolated stretch of beach. He was lying on the shore, about to be washed away by the incoming tide, with his throat cut, and a single line of footprints - his own - crossing the otherwise pristine sand. Murder? Suicide? (Certainly, it couldn't have been an accident!) But - as she scrambled to take photographs of the body (which was about to wash away with the tide, there being nobody to help bring the body safely back to shore) she wondered what the police would make of the whole thing, once they had been alerted to the problem. As for Lord Peter, he soon turned up and began investigating a most peculiar death with both Harriet and the police. It happens in Have His Carcase, by Dorothy L. Sayers, originally published in 1932. It was the seventh of eleven novels to feature Lord Peter Wimsey and the second to co-star Harriet Vane. This Golden Age mystery is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.
In Have His Carcase, Lord Peter hurries to the town of Wilvercombe when he hears about Harriet’s discovery of the body. The victim turns out to be a gigolo who worked at one of the local hotels as a paid dancing companion. The police are grateful for Harriet’s quick thinking and photographic work, as the body has indeed been washed away by the tides, and it is likely to take at least several days before it can be recovered. It seems to the police to be quite clearly a case of suicide – after all, the evidence shows that the victim was quite alone on the beach, with only that single set of his own footprints. Lord Peter is unsatisfied – there are too many unexplained quirks. Intrigued, he and Harriet begin investigating what turns out to be an enormously complicated case. Along the way, Lord Peter will repeatedly ask Harriet Vane again to marry him. And she will continue to refuse him – at least in this book. Sayers provides an interesting cast of characters and a rather staggering set of complications that must be resolved before a very clever murder plot can be unraveled. And the interplay between Lord Peter and Harriet, a running theme throughout the book, is a wonderful sparring match.
Having recently developed more of a tolerance for Sayers via her short fiction, I'm tempted to take this one on before too long. Elsewhere she's been a bit uneven, or almost too ridiculous (ahemNineTailorsahem), but this is strating to creep into my brain with a sort of "Eh? Eh?" nudge-nudge attitude that's got me lining it up in a couple of months...
Posted by: D | January 22, 2018 at 02:17 PM
I think it's a good mystery and one you might enjoy (though you may see through to the explanation of the impossibilities fairly early on). On the other hand, I'd have to disagree with you about The Nine Tailors, which has always been one of my favorites - but then, I enjoy the long (and, I think, beautifully written) passages on change-ringing. So you may want to take my suggestions with a grain of salt... ;-)
Posted by: Les Blatt | January 22, 2018 at 03:49 PM