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Jun 05, 2007

Writerlibrarian rated it:

I'm still rationing my reading of Sayers' Lord Peter series but it's hard. I liked this one a lot too. Almost the perfect murder. An very clever villain, Parker and Peter, on the road, staying in pub, kicking themselves under the table to stop the other one from making a mistake. Bunter being just Bunter. So, story, this great old lady died of natural death and left her money to her great niece. The doctor makes a fuss because even if his patient was very ill (cancer) she wasn't on death's door. More...

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Nov 03, 2011

Mary rated it:

I love the Lord Peter Wimsey stories! Though this one is not my absolute favorite (the chief villain's actions get a bit too convoluted for me, and the number of bodies said villain leaves in his/her wake is distressing!), it's nevertheless a very good book and I was happy to reread it. I love Sayers' use of language, but it's the characters who really make this book shine. Lord Peter is his usual sharp and witty self, and I adore Charles Parker (his comments on Peter's driving, and vice versa, More...

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Jul 20, 2011

Kaarin rated it:

I don't read a ton of mysteries, and this is really my first one in the 'the butler did it' type of style. I think another way of saying it is the 'English gentleman detective.' Oh wait, I've read a bunch of Sherlock Holmes so I guess I have read them before. ANYWAY, I thought the book was good, but really very much a product of its time. It is not 'timeless' reading, you would be mistaken as to the time period this book takes place in. The slang is so heavey it was at times difficult to fol More...

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May 29, 2010

Surreysmum rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Jul 15, 2011

Bev rated it:

"But if he thought the woman was being murdered--"

"My dear Charles," said the man with the monocle, "it doesn't do for people, especially doctors, to go about 'thinking' things. They may get into frightful trouble. In Pritchard's case, I consider Dr. Paterson did all he reasonably could by refusing a certificate for Mrs. Taylor and sending that uncommonly disquieting letter to the Registrar."

Thus begins the story of Unnatural Death by Dorothy More...

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Mar 14, 2011

tea_for_two rated it:

A wealthy and very ill old woman dies, just slightly before her time, and the doctor who cried foul was drummed out of town. Lord Peter Wimsey investigates the perfect murder.

A couple of observations about Unnatural Death:

1) Sayers is *so* good at creating atmosphere and showing people's personality, even minor characters, all without explicitly telling us anything. For example, Sayers says this about Miss Murgatroyd and Mrs. Peasgood, two throw away characters present at a More...

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May 15, 2011

Briar Rose rated it:

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Dec 30, 2010

Kelly rated it:

Now, this was an excellent read. First of all, there were no inquests! Secondly, Miss Climpson appeared for the first time. I love her. I also love the fact that Sayers was legitimately concerned about the bloc of "idle spinster women" and thus created this sort of agency for them. And further, Miss Climpson is a wonderful representative: clever, funny, and slightly insane. On a separate note, I'm now absolutely consumed with the desire to write like Miss Climpson. I would find it hila More...

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Nov 10, 2011

Brendan rated it:

Sayers' novel, adapted to a full-cast radio play, is a delightful mystery in the Columbo model, where our detective knows, from the get-out, who committed the murder, and the mystery lies in discovering how to prove it.

I've read quite a few of the Lord Peter Whimsey stories and feel like I know the character pretty well, but this audio drama did a lot to help me understand him even better, especially because the actor playing Whimsey knows how to deploy the Britishism "what More...

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Sep 02, 2011

Helen rated it:

One either loves Lord Peter or one despises him. I've read and reread these for years and understand MS Sayers having an excessive fondness for the character. The tv films were very good, but the books are better. This appears to have been a bit of an experiment because it has as its basis a change in the laws of intestacy so that when the person died appeared to be of great importance. The whole story moves with great slowness, mere curiosity on Lord Peter's part at first and then a greater cur More...

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Oct 15, 2011

Moira rated it:

Boo! I love Dorothy L. Sayers later murder mysteries featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, especially Strong Poison and Have His Carcass, but these early novels are very trying. Did not like this one at all, especially the "Rumplestiltskin" nature of making up a crime that seems to barely exist outside the imagination of the bored detective and his hunch. Anti-semitic sentiments peppered throughout, and it does not cast lesbians or British public sentiment towards black people in a very nice li More...

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Oct 17, 2011

Anne rated it:

As I said when I first started reading this one, how did I manage to miss it? I read the Harriet Vane mysteries first, all four of them, and then I went back to Whose Body? and read some random ones out of sequence. I think somewhere in there I also read Unnatural Causes by P.D. James, which may have caused some confusion.

So. This was brilliant. This book is everything I love about the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. It had Inspector Parker, it introduced the truly fabulous Miss Clim More...

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Mar 30, 2011

Terra rated it:

Dear Dorothy Sayers, HOW ARE YOU SO AWESOME? The scene with Lord Peter and the vicar--oh my HEART. MY HEEEAAART. The more of these I read, the more deeply I approve. This book contained the only suspenseful scene about English trust & estates law I have ever read (possibly that has ever been written). I'm thinking that DLS was something of a law geek. Yes? Yes. The one thing that did make me a bit uncomfortable (as is often the case with books of this period that I otherwise adore *COUGH*P.G.Wod More...

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Dec 12, 2009

Megan rated it:

This book promised from the beginning to be a very entertaining and enjoyable read. It was my first Sayers novel, and I was very pleased with Wimsey's character, who seemed oddly to combine the genius of Sherlock Holmes with the foppishness of Woodhouse's Bertie Wooster. It was full of quotes from great literature, including very interesting Bible references (which were not blatant at all), but around the middle I felt the story was getting a little too gory for me. There were some lovely cha More...

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Aug 24, 2009

Sbuchler rated it:

Genre: Mystery

This is my favorite of the Lord Peter mysteries that do not feature Harriet Vane - and the audio version of the book was quite wonderful. Ian Carmichael continues to give a very nice rendition of Lord Peter.

This novel introduces Miss. Climpson and unlike the previous novels in the series, the point of view is split between Lord Peter and Miss Climpson, allowing us a different view into the goings on in the neighborhood of the murder. Or rather presumed murde More...

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Oct 11, 2009

Lauren rated it:

I love Dorothy Sayers. I had her books in storage and I've begun to re-read them. It's long enough since I read them that I don't remember. I love the Lord Peter Wimsey character. Good name for him. He's full of what I would call "cheerful irony." While he is effected by tragedy, and genuinely seems to like people, he keeps a humorous attitude about himself and human nature. Here's an example. Lord Wimsey is speaking to a stranger in a bar who has started to tell a story. "D More...

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Feb 19, 2010

Ali rated it:

I loved this old fashioned murder mystery, with the wonderful Lord Peter Wimsey taking charge of what looks like a case of natural death. All the way through the reader knows "whodunnit" but the ways and wherefores are not so straight forward, and neither is the evidence gathering, and the final detection of the culprit. This novel - first published in 1927 is a novel of its time, as is the speach of the characters, and therefore there are some examples of dreadful non pc even racist l More...

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Mar 06, 2010

Dennis rated it:

This is one of those Peter Wimsey books that I imagine could have been written by Harriet Vane, since she's portrayed as fussing about with timetables and alibis and all the appurtenances of the mystery writer's craft. Here the key elements are a legal technicality which provides a motive for murder and a medical technique which provides the means. There's also the question of a double identity and a long-lost relative, plus some very 1920's subtlety about lesbian relationships and no subtlety More...

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Dec 03, 2011

Terry rated it:

This is NOT the edition of this book that I have; mine was published in 1955, but it is not listed in GoodReads. I'm too new a user to reallly understand how to upload another book, perhaps I'll get around to it later.

The distinguishing features of the cover of this book are that it is dark blue, with a diagonal slash outlined in black saying "A LORD PETER WIMSEY NOVEL" in bright pink letters, with author's name and title in italics in white above and below the slash, and th More...

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Apr 20, 2011

Kim rated it:

I'm reading the Peter Wimsey novels in publication order (after spending many years only re-reading the ones involving Harriet Vane). This one I liked a lot, even though I worked out the central plot twist fairly early in the piece. (Generally speaking I prefer not to guess such things, but at least I didn't work out the "how" until just before Lord Peter came up with it!) As a lawyer, one of the things I really loved was the chapter discussing succession law. I also loved being introd More...

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Dec 22, 2011

Nikki rated it:

My favourite so far, I think. The plot itself -- the whodunnit aspect, anyway -- isn't too much trouble to me, because I remember that around the same time as I first read it, someone in NCIS was killed in the same way as the murderer uses multiple times here. So that part seemed rather obvious to me. But Lord Peter is so fun -- and I love Parker, possibly even more in this version than in the books. Miss Climpson is rather fun, too.

It's surprising how addictive these radioplays are, t More...

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Aug 27, 2011

Muttering Mama rated it:

This is the third Lord Peter Wimsey (you MUST say that with a affected British accent, by the way) Mystery and I enjoyed it very much. Again, I was struck at how funny Sayers is. Much more so than Christie or Marsh, though I do enjoy their work immensely. I found myself reading entire passages to my husband or giggling out loud.

**SPOILER BELOW** (Sort of.)

The mystery itself was well done. I think the "Who" was pretty obvious from the start, and the main mystery su More...

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May 27, 2010

Nikki rated it:

Still not seeing much of Lord Peter as a character, to date. In fact, looking back over it, this book didn't really spend much time with him at all, at least not much time of any consequence -- even less than in Clouds of Witness, though there was, of course, a family connection there. It doesn't seem strongly tied to the other books: there's little reference to Peter Wimsey's family, or Parker's interest in Lady Mary, or such things. I could have wished for more of Bunter, too. I'm not sure if More...

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Oct 06, 2009

Sandy rated it:

A charming if lighter weight entry in the Lord Peter Wimsey series.

"Unnatural Death" is a bit of an unusual mystery novel in that the person who committed the murder is a given from the beginning, making the story not so much a whodunnit as a howdunnit and a whydunnit. Although other Wimsey novels have stronger core concepts, Sayers does a good job here of playing around with that idea. As for the murder itself, you have lesbians and lots of town gossip and an earnestly More...

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Oct 19, 2007

Maria rated it:

Others have already mentioned the caveat of the casual racism, so I'll skip that.

This is a really good read. It's pretty neat and tense and creepy as a mystery (even though you know right from the start who did it), but is even better as a character study. There's plenty of Parker and Miss Climpson, and a bunch of interesting new characters. There was one revelation at the end that was supposed to be shocking but which I thought was pretty obvious, but it didn't negatively impact my More...

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Oct 04, 2007

Andrew rated it:

So here's the chain of associations that threw me up against Lord Peter:

In 2005, out of a spasm of nervousness, I started indexing all my books. In the process I realized that while I had a wide range of subjects and styles, almost everything I had was written by men. So I started asking people for recommendations for good women writers, trying to make up in a year what I'd neglected for twenty.

Which introduced me to Connie Willis and her time travel novels, specifically More...

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Aug 16, 2007

Jack rated it:

The third Lord Peter novel; in this one, the mystery starts as little more than a bar bet, when Wimsey and Parker are dining out and discussing the nature of perfect murders. A man at the next table overhears them and volunteers the tale of one of his aged cancer patients who died unexpectedly, but of apparently natural causes; after a brief investigation, Wimsey is convinced that something is amiss, and bets Parker that he will have the woman's great-niece brought to justice for her murder wit More...

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Sep 03, 2011

Elizabeth rated it:

One of the weaker Lord Peter books (although not as bad as "Five Red Herrings," which is just unspeakably terrible). Overplotted (seriously, Miss Sayers, no one in 1927 gave a flying fuck about the 1837 Wills Act, and if your entire plot hinges on a subtlety of legal vocabulary, you need some actual fun to leaven it; I say this as someone who reads Blackstone for fun), Harriet-and-Bunter-and-Dowager-Duchess-deprived, and I deeply resent that Miss Climpson isn't allowed to rescue hersel

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Oct 29, 2011

Reds_reads rated it:

Onto book number 3....

Lord Peter solves the mystery of an old and ailing lady's unexpectedly quick death, assisted by the usual suspects, and for the first time, by Miss Climpson, whose ingenuity always amuses me.

As with Clouds of Witness, the characters are better drawn, which makes for a much more enjoyable read. Less comfortable is the casual racism and erm variable attitudes to lesbianism that highlight the date this book was written and the morality of those days.

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Jul 31, 2011

Jeremy rated it:

Entertaining, if a trifle slow and involuted to suit me. There was definitely some weird homophobic undertones, but there were also some apparently admirable happily paired women (if it's never made explicit that they were lovers, it's still definitely open that they were life partners.) I found that whole theme, which pervades the story, a bit jarring, but the actual mystery was fine and I did not see the solution coming at all.

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