Review: Nine Tailors: Changes Rung on an Old Theme in Two Short Touches and Two Full Peals

Nine Tailors: Changes Rung on an Old Theme in Two Short Touches and Two Full Peals by Dorothy L. Sayers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've said in previous reviews of the Lord Peter Wimsey books that they're often at their best when what is on screen is not the solving of the mystery, hence my disappointment with The Five Red Herrings , where the mystery apparatus is so obtrusive there's not much room for anything else. This book is the direct opposite of that; it spends a great deal of time on establishing the scene of the crime before the crime is even suspected, and some of its best parts are, indeed, not related directly to the solving of the mystery. I was particularly moved by the way the community pulled together to cope with a natural disaster, late in the book.

Some of the non-mystery parts are about campanology (bell-ringing), and I'll admit that they were so technical I didn't follow them much, but I don't think I was supposed to. They created an atmosphere, and I got a clear enough idea of how the change-ringing was done to understand when that became relevant to the plot. The Rector of the small village that Wimsey happens to end up spending New Year's in after a minor car accident is a dedicated campanologist, and one of Sayers' delightfully discursive characters, whose dialog gives you everything you need to know about his character and is also enjoyable in itself. Like most if not all of her Church of England clergymen, he's genuinely devout and a deeply kind person, which speaks well of her father, an Anglican vicar.

Some time after Lord Peter takes part in a record-setting all-night bell-ringing session and goes on, car repaired, to his original destination, a man dies of illness, and when his recently-deceased wife's grave is opened in order to add him to it, the gravediggers discover another corpse, mutilated to be unrecognisable, that has been there roughly since New Year (shortly after the legitimate inhabitant of the grave was interred). Discovering who he was and how he got there turns out to involve a jewel theft from years before in which the loot never turned up, and a bizarre and complicated series of events involving false identities, mistaken assumptions and an unusual cause of death.

I did spot how the victim had died some time before Wimsey, but I think I was supposed to (the author dropped a clear hint), and the scene in which he realizes the explanation was powerful and vivid enough that I forgive his not working it out earlier. It's one of several strong scenes, and the whole book has wonderful description of the landscape and weather of East Anglia, good characterization, and plenty of incident both relevant and irrelevant to the plot which is enjoyable in a cosy way. It's excellent work, and because of that and the moving passages about the flood, I'm putting it in the Gold tier of my annual recommendation list.

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