Book review: The Nine Tailors

The Nine Tailors is a 1934 mystery novel by the British writer Dorothy L. Sayers, her ninth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. The story is set in the Lincolnshire Fens, and revolves around a group of bell-ringers at the local parish church. The book has been described as Sayers' finest literary achievement, although not all critics were convinced by the mode of death, nor by the amount of technical campanology detail included says wiki.

As for the literary style, that does seem to be present, to some detriment of the detective aspects, but I'm happy with that.

We live in Cambridge, on the edge of the fens, and have visited places named in the text, and have seen the landscape; so that helps with sympathy to the novel.

The "mode of death" is frankly a disappointment. I think you can make a case for it fitting the gloomy flooded bell-ringing style, but denouement-wise it is a distinct let-down; after all the excitment the book is suddenly over, with no release. Unless you like the idea of Deacon being effectively tortured to death, which some might; he was a bad person, after all.

I guessed the Deacon-is-not-dead twist; that was not hard and really the evidence for his death so weak that you wonder he was considered dead at all. DLS doesn't even throw in a "it was wartime; people were busy" type excuse, because I think she is aware of how weak it is and doesn't want to draw attention.

But I failed to think through the implications of DinD, even though they are - in retrospect - obvious, so that's deffo a score for her.

Some things seem too convenient: recalling sailor Jim from the far side of the world; the French police tracking down a woman with laughably inadequate information. But other things are rather nice: the two brothers unshakeably protecting as they think each other for example. I don't think that killing Will at the end was necessary or nice, though.

The cipher is strange though: it is not really decodable (though Our Hero of course does) so how is it distinguishable from random text? If it is intended as proof that there is a secret, I don't see how it can be. You can't prove it until you decode it, at which point it might just as well be plaintext. But the link to the emeralds placement up in the rafters with the high-church rector's renovations, is lovely; the character of the church is well told.