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From time to time, I still meet people who enjoy traditional mysteries, are in the process of discovering the great Golden Age authors, and have not yet encountered Dorothy L. Sayers and her creation, Lord Peter Wimsey. When I mention Sayers (and receive blank stares in return), I frequently suggest they find themselves a copy of Murder Must Advertise. I enjoy all the Wimsey books, but (as someone who spent some time working in public relations) I have always had a solid friendship with Murder Must Advertise. I think the audio review I wrote for the Classic Mysteries podcast a decade ago explains my love for the book:
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Things are not going well at Pym’s, the busy and successful London advertising agency. There was the copywriter who fell down a steep circular staircase, killing himself, which can easily put a damper on your day. And there was his replacement, a young man who was something of a mystery to the rest of the staff, but who seemed – beyond his friendliness – to ask a lot of sometimes embarrassing questions. Ultimately, everyone would learn that murder was only the beginning of the trouble, in Murder Must Advertise, by Dorothy L. Sayers.
I should begin this week with a disclaimer: over the course of my career in journalism followed by one in marketing, I have come into close contact with advertising agencies. They are, by and large, a peaceful group, and are not what I would suspect as being a good breeding ground for the kind of shenanigans that go on in Murder Must Advertise. Certainly Dorothy L. Sayers, herself a veteran of time spent working in an ad agency, noted in her author’s note to this novel, “the idea that any crime could possibly be perpetrated on advertising premises is one that could only occur to the ill-regulated fancy of a detective novelist, trained to fasten the guilt upon the Most Unlikely Person.”
Fair enough. And, of course, when Murder Must Advertise was written, in 1933, advertising agencies were dealing almost exclusively with newspapers. There was no TV and, in England, no radio advertising. All of this is helpful in understanding some of the background of Murder Must Advertise, and why I find it one of the best of the Lord Peter Wimsey stories.
Let me review the situation, at the opening of the book: Pym’s Publicity has recently had a vacancy for a junior copywriter, because the young man who had held that position broke his neck in a fall down a very steep and rather slippery circular staircase. The vacancy is filled by a young man who calls himself Death Bredon. That first name is spelled d-e-a-t-h, and I am pronouncing it as “Death” because that is the way we are told the character pronounced it. As he explains, “Most of the people who are plagued with it make it rhyme with teeth, but personally I think it sounds more picturesque when rhymed with breath.”
Not much is known about this young man – although the reader of other Sayers books may do well to remember that Lord Peter Wimsey has middle names. Certainly Bredon looks a great deal like Lord Peter, and insists (when talking to some of the shadier characters encountered in this book) that he is Lord Peter’s black sheep cousin.
At any rate, Bredon turns out to have quite a flair for copywriting – and also appears to be doing some private investigating, not just of the mysterious death of his predecessor, but also of what may be other, even more serious goings-on at Pym’s Publicity. Certainly Chief Detective Inspector Charles Parker – Lord Peter’s brother-in-law – is deeply involved in investigating a particularly vicious and hard-to-crack drug smuggling ring. Could there be a connection between the two cases?
Well of course. But what that connection is, I will leave to you to discover by reading the book. This is a mystery where – while there are some “whodunit” elements – the questions of “why” and “how” are far more significant: what is the connection between Pym’s and the mysterious distribution of hard narcotics that appears to be happening.
I feel that I’m really not doing Sayers justice in my description of the plot. I think this is one of her best efforts. The chapters alternate roughly between scenes at the advertising agency, where we see the characters involved in coming up with ad campaigns, writing copy, deciding on headlines and illustrations, and the always nerve-wracking tasks of dealing with newspaper deadlines on one hand and fractious clients on the other, and more conventional near-thriller elements, as Lord Peter and the police try to uncover the distribution secrets of a large and deadly drug-smuggling ring, often through some very unusual tactics.
Murder Must Advertise is an excellent book. It isn’t until quite late in the story that we uncover exactly what is happening at the agency – and, when we do find it out, I think you’ll agree that it is one of the most ingenious plots ever devised. It is breathtakingly simple and yet complex enough to almost completely escape detection.
I think you’ll enjoy Lord Peter here, not to mention Death Bredon, Chief Detective Inspector Parker, and many of the people working at Pym’s Publicity. You may find the ending morally ambiguous, something which became more common in Sayers’ later novels and which lends a darker coloring to what could otherwise be a fairly light story (despite a large number of murders). As with all of Sayers’ books about Lord Peter Wimsey, Murder Must Advertise is readily available in print. It is one of my long-time favorites.
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You can listen to the complete audio review by clicking here.
Next: The Book of the Dead, by Elizabeth Daly.
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