Why am I passionate about this?
I don’t warm to crime novels where the only point is to find whodunnit. Those that resonate with me are the ones that have an extra dimension. It may be taking me into a world I am unfamiliar with, like bell-ringing or a theatre troupe. Or it could be a richly-evoked setting, like Donna Fletcher Crow’s Celtic Christian background. Or a character whose very flaws make them more gripping, such as Rebus or Wallender. I want to come away feeling enriched and not just pleased that I guessed that it was the butler with the candlestick.
Fay's book list on crime novels that have a rich dimension
Why did Fay love this book?
I loved both the richly evoked setting of the Lincolnshire Fens and the detailed knowledge of bell-ringing. The latter is not just an add-on. The knowledge of change-ringing is crucial to solving the cipher in a document found in the bell-chamber. It also has a very real bearing on the death of the victim.
I really enjoy books that leave me feeling I’ve been enriched and not merely entertained.
In other books by Sayers I warmed to the character of Harriet Vane and the frisson of the relationship between her and the investigator Lord Peter Wimsey.
4 authors picked The Nine Tailors as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
When his sexton finds a corpse in the wrong grave, the rector of Fenchurch
St Paul asks Lord Peter Wimsey to find out who the dead man was and how
he came to be there.
The lore of bell-ringing and a brilliantly-evoked village in the remote fens of
East Anglia are the unforgettable background to a story of an old unsolved crime
and its violent unravelling twenty years later.
'I admire her novels ... she has great fertility of invention, ingenuity and a wonderful
eye for detail' Ruth Rendell
(P)2015 Hodder & Stoughton