Review: Have His Carcase

Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A solid and intriguing mystery, rife with clues, suspects and alibis and equipped both with a mysterious cypher and an ingenious solution. It progresses the Lord Peter/Harriet Vane relationship introduced in Strong Poison , in the sense that Lord Peter persists (for a while; he eventually gives it up) in asking her to marry him, to a degree that we would potentially consider sexual harassment today, and she consistently turns him down like a sheet, but does have a few thoughts that are favourable towards him.

In the coincidental manner typical of a cosy mystery, Harriet happens to be in an otherwise deserted coastal spot and to discover a body of a young man with his throat cut, on a rock which is going to be inundated at high tide. She takes photographs and a few portable clues, but isn't strong enough to move him to higher ground, so for most of the book the actual body is missing. For various reasons, they're able to trace the movements of multiple people quite accurately, but everyone who has motive also has a solid alibi for the presumed time of death (based on the state of the victim's blood at the time of Harriet's discovery). The young man was a refugee from the Russian Revolution as a child, and is now a dancer and gigolo at a small resort town; he was engaged to a well-off lady who tries to make out she's younger than she is, who was one of the ladies he regularly danced with. She's convinced that his stories of being a Russian prince are true, and that he's been murdered by Bolsheviks, but the evidence is far from conclusive that he was murdered at all, rather than committing suicide.

In contrast to earlier books, where Lord Peter doesn't participate in other characters' prejudice and slurs against Jews and black people, in this book he casually uses the word "dago" in dialogue with Harriet, which I found disappointing. Peter is still admirably clever in this book, but he's not so admirable in his personal behaviour as was the case in some earlier books, and this influenced my rating downwards, dropping it into the Silver tier of my annual recommendation list. In general, it's more conventional (for the time) in its outlook and less insightful into the human condition than others in the series.

The New English Library edition, which I have, is sloppily typeset, especially towards the end. Not only are there more than the average number of typographical errors, but in one chapter there are at least three places where entire lines of text have not been set.

It's complex, clever, and well worth reading, though not, in my opinion, the best of the series so far.

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