Rating: 
Summary: Great book, but read Strong Poison first
Review: All of Dorothy Sayers' mysteries are worth reading. She has a command of English and a story-telling ability that makes her, in my opinion, one of the two greatest mystery writers of the twentieth century. Most of Ms. Sayers' mysteries feature Lord Peter, second son of the Duke of Denver. He is one of the most delightful characters in English literature and well worth meeting in any of Ms. Sayers books. Most of the Lord Peter mysteries stand alone and can be read without worrying about sequence. However four of the mysteries involve Harriet Vane, and for maximum enjoyment, those four mysteries should be read in order. Strong Poison describes the first meeting between Harriet and Lord Peter. Have His Carcase explores the relationship between the two of them as they investigate the death of a man whose body Harriet discovers while hiking along a deserted beach. The interaction between the two of them can best be understood and appreciated if Strong Poison is read first. Have His Carcase may be the least enjoyable of the four romance-mysteries involving Harriet, but this book leads to the final two books in the series, and those two books are the finest romance-mysteries ever written.
Rating:
Summary: Great book, but read Strong Poison first
Review: All of Dorothy Sayers' mysteries are worth reading. She has a command of English and a story-telling ability that makes her, in my opinion, one of the two greatest mystery writers of the twentieth century. Most of Ms. Sayers' mysteries feature Lord Peter, second son of the Duke of Denver. He is one of the most delightful characters in English literature and well worth meeting in any of Ms. Sayers books. Most of the Lord Peter mysteries stand alone and can be read without worrying about sequence. However four of the mysteries involve Harriet Vane, and for maximum enjoyment, those four mysteries should be read in order. Strong Poison describes the first meeting between Harriet and Lord Peter. Have His Carcase explores the relationship between the two of them as they investigate the death of a man whose body Harriet discovers while hiking along a deserted beach. The interaction between the two of them can best be understood and appreciated if Strong Poison is read first. Have His Carcase may be the least enjoyable of the four romance-mysteries involving Harriet, but this book leads to the final two books in the series, and those two books are the finest romance-mysteries ever written.
Rating: 
Summary: Another cracking read!
Review: An intricate, well-paced plot full of pathos and farce. Excellent quotes used as chapter headings from "The Bride's Tragedy" and "Death's Jestbook" by T.L. Beddoes. Includes further interesting developments in the relationship between Peter and Harriett...
Rating:
Summary: Another cracking read!
Review: An intricate, well-paced plot full of pathos and farce. Excellent quotes used as chapter headings from "The Bride's Tragedy" and "Death's Jestbook" by T.L. Beddoes. Includes further interesting developments in the relationship between Peter and Harriett...
Rating:
Summary: The feisty Harriet and the monocled Lord Peter Wimsey.
Review: Dorothy L Sayers provided some of the great treasures to be found in the so-called "Golden Age of Detective Fiction". A classical scholar with a formidable intellect, she was an eminent practitioner and an eloquent critic of detective fiction. Her feisty, detective fiction writing character, Harriet Vane, and her aristocratic, monocled, amateur detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, may be found together for the second time in her 1932 novel "Have His Carcase". On a walking holiday, while recovering from a court case in which she was alleged to have killed her lover, Harriet Vane discovers the body of a man. It is lying on rocks on a beach, close to low tide level. The evidence suggests suicide. After taking photographs with her camera, finding a cut throat razor and removing a shoe from the corpse, Harriet vainly tries to enlist help in moving the body before it is washed away by the incoming tide. The local police force is alerted and so is Lord Peter Wimsey. This is a long novel. Interest focuses not only on the solution to the mystery but also on the likelihood of Wimsey succeeding with his wish to marry Harriet. There is witty dialogue, there are fulsome reports from a range of eccentric characters, there are descriptions of the human anatomy and how it responds to the throat being cut, there is an interminable attempt to decode a ciphered letter, and there are classical quotations provided at the start of each chapter. There is little dramatic tension, no suspense, and no thrills. Dorothy L Sayers was a cultivated, fluent writer, sometimes boring but never banal. If your tolerance of boredom is low, but your credit balance at the bank is high, then invest in the audio tape reading of the book provided by Ian Carmichael. English actor Ian Carmichael has had great success associated with various adaptations of the novels of Dorothy L Sayers. He brings wonderful energy and gusto to this full-length reading, enough to keep you delighted for more than fifteen hours.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic in Cryptology
Review: I recommend this book primarily because it contains Lord Wimsey and Harriet's solution of a Playfair cipher. Most readers will recall Sherlock Holmes' solution of the Dancing Men cipher (recounted in Conan Doyle's The Adventure of the Dancing Men) and Legrand's solution of Captain Kidd's cipher (recounted in Poe's The Gold Bug). Both of these are simple substitution ciphers, easily broken if one knows certain facts about the English language, such as the order of letter frequency (E, T, O, A, N . . .) The Playfair cipher, on the other hand, is an order of magnitude more difficult to solve. It is a digram cipher, using pairs of letters (there are 26x26=676 possible digrams) instead of individual letters to encrypt the message. Tables of digram frequencies are of little use in decrypting short messages. Other methods are required. The mechanics are explained in the text. The Playfair cipher was used operationally in WWII and to this day remains unsolvable as a one-time, short message, unknown-keyword cipher, unless you can guess one of the plaintext words. Wimsey and Harriet were lucky that they were dealing with an amateur. Sayer's audacious trump of Conan Doyle and Poe caught my attention. The rest of the book is, to put it mildly, well-plotted. There is evidence here that native British intelligence far exceeds what one finds in the colonies. No wonder Sayers is so popular.
Rating: 
Summary: Above her average
Review: I've read 2 other novels by Sayers (5 Red herrings, and Murder must advertise) before. This one is somewhat better than the other 2 and close to Dame Christie's standard. The story is more on Carr's line. A man's throat was cut on a lonely beach, despite the number of witnesses, nobody saw anyone close to the victim at the supposed time of death, besides, suspects' cast-iron alibis were comfirmed not only by their conspirators but also by innocent witnesses. The author provided an ingenious explanation that accounts for all. Good things said, it isn't short of weakness. First, it is far too fat for a relatively simple plot. Sayers spent vast amount of words on the dispute between suicide theory and murder theory despite the fact that the throat was cut to the neck bone by one slash. I believe Zangwill had tersely pointed out that such an incision is impossible to be self inflicted in one sentence decades before in his Big Bow Mystery. Besides, since the hero, Lord Wimsey, supported the murder theory as early as in the 2nd chapter, the dispute could have been long called off. (A mystery writer is unlikely to let his/her hero make a huge mistake. Give readers some credit!) Secondly, the motive is unconvincing at all. If one's rich mother is only 57 and in perfect health, and to disinherit one, one doesn't go the long way to murder the new heir-to-be instead of one's own mother. And don't tell me the murderer in this novel is not cold-blooded enough to do so!
Rating:
Summary: Second story in the Harriet Vane series
Review: My first encounter with Dorothy L. Sayers was the Mobile Mystery Theater series showing on PBS. I now have all three DVD's of the series ("Strong Poison", "Gaudy Night" and "Have His Carcase".) They never produced "Busman's Honeymoon" Dorothy sold the rights to Hollywood and BBC could not get them back. The Resulting movie is "Haunted Honeymoon"(1940)
Naturally the TV media cannot fill in all the details that you would pick up from reading the book. So I read the book. This added more depth to the story, now I appreciate Dorothy L. Sayers more than Agatha Christie. Dorothy not only fleshes her characters out better but her side trips into philosophy and psychology make the story that much more interesting. And just when you say what is the relevance to this conversation it is wrapped up in the final solution.
This is the second of the book series. The story is complete and can be used as a stand-alone story. The notorious Harriet Vane is out for a walk and takes a nap. She wakes up and finds (you guest it) a body. If not for her trusty camera, no one would believe her. As it is the authorities think it was suicide. Wimsey thinks it is murder. Naturally everyone, especially the main suspect has an airtight alibi. The real interest is the interaction between Lord Peter and Harriet.
Rating:
Summary: Second in the Harriet Vane series
Review: Personally I have always been an Agatha the Christie fan. My first encounter with Dorothy L. Sayers was the Mobile Mystery Theater series showing on PBS. Unfortunately I did not realize that my video player was also a recorder until the "Gaudy Night" was on Mystery Theater. In that sense I was lucky to copy the complete three hour "Gaudy Night." However it was too late for "Strong Poison" and "Have His Carcase". They never produced "Busman's Honeymoon". Naturally the TV media cannot fill in all the details that you would pick up from reading the book. So I read the book. This added more depth to the story, but now I appreciate Dorothy L. Sayers more than Agatha Christie. But Dorothy not only fleshes her characters out better but her side trips into philosophy and psychology make the story that much more interesting. And just when you say what is the relevance to this conversation it is wrapped up in the final solution. We are in luck as this is an unabridged tape of "Have His Carcase" The reader Is Ian Carmichael the first TV Lord Peter Wimsey. It makes a good compliment to the book. This is the second of the book series. The story is complete and can be used as a stand-alone story. The notorious Harriet Vane is out for a walk and takes a nap. She wakes up and finds (you guest it) a body. If not for her trusty camera no one would believe her. As it is the authorities think it was suicide. Wimsey thinks it is murder. Naturally everyone, especially the main suspect has an airtight alibi. The real interests is the interaction between Lord Peter and Harriet.
Rating:
Summary: I give Petherbridge 5 stars; Audio gets 4 due to abridgement
Review: The reviews I value most on amazon are those for audio books, because not only does the quality of the writing need to be ascertained, but also the quality of the reader -- a much more nebulus and subjective thing to assess. I have several of my favorite Sayers novels on audio, and the Petherbridge ones are my preference, despite their being abridged. David Case also does an excellent job on his narration of Whose Body. But I must add my support to the previous post which noted that Ian Carmichael can be difficult to follow. Carmichael does a decent Whimsey, but cannot bend his voice enough to create distinct characters beyond Whimsey. All too often I find myself backing up to replay episodes of conversation because I can't keep track of WHO is talking -- and this is despite having read the book! I cannot recommend the Carmichael readings to those unfamilar with the original works. Start with Petherbridge instead.
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