The Nine Tailors

I highly recommend every mystery Sayers has written. She’s my kind of author — articulate, inspiring, a writer who writes about her surroundings with a realism that allows a reader to enter and learn more: In this book, death by the ringing of church bells in a small English village.

She’s complex but delivers layers of life and death with profound simplicity and understanding. The daughter of a minister, an advertising copywriter, a poet, she graduated from Oxford and used her life experiences to color every page she wrote.

I love her spunk and the exciting way she has written.… show more.

From a generation of writers before P.D. James, Dorothy L. Sayers’ book represents the best of the ‘Golden Age of Crime Fiction’. It is hugely atmospheric, both of its time and its location. As the flood waters rise and threaten a remote Fenland village, the residents flock to the village church for refuge from the deluge. But there is a mysterious death; fortunately for the rector, Lord Peter Wimsey just happens to be on hand to get to the bottom of it before the dramatic conclusion. Sayers grew up as a vicar’s daughter in the Fens, and she employs her… show more.

This is a Lord Peter Wimsey novel, and it’s my favourite. Along with his faithful manservant, Bunter, Wimsey is stranded by a car accident and quickly finds himself in the midst of a dastardly deed. I have to admit, I often find the ‘What Ho’ type of upper-class gentleman of that era irritating, but this book is not quite so bad as others. What I like most about this one is the technical side of the crime, so often missing in books of that era, which makes for an absorbing read.