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The Five Red Herrings (Lord Peter Wimsey, #7)

Dorothy L. Sayers

Start date: July 1, 2016

Finish date: July 31, 2016

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* Sept 25: The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) by Agatha Christie
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* Sept 25: The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) - SPOILER Thread
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What Members Thought

Dec 27, 2014 Amy marked it as abandoned

It turns out that train time tables are so boring that not even a great writer like Dorothy Sayers can make them interesting.

Let me give you a fictional paragraph that could have been included in the book to give you an idea of the tedious and confusing-ness of train time tables in all their boring glory:

"It turns out the Chamley was on the 1.5 to Ayers when we thought he was on the 1.41 to Allen even though his wife found a ticket for the 2.5, which was hard to believe because the train only r ...more

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Mar 11, 2024 Julie Durnell rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: england-uk, mystery

2.5 stars upped to 3 just because it's Lord Wimsey. This was a real slog, way too many herrings, way too convoluted, too many characters to keep track of, and way too long. But I will go on to #8 after a longish break! ...more

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May 16, 2011 Abbey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: series, own, reviewed, favorites, vintage, myst-fems-project, myst-set-andor-auth-uk, myst-cosies

1931, #6 Lord Peter Wimsey, on holiday in Scotland, apa SUSPICIOUS CHARACTERS; an artists' colony in a wee town in Scotland is filled with odd stories, peculiar alibis, and confused police after the most unliked man in town gets himself messily murdered whilst painting a landscape. Classic timetable plot with a peculiar attitude, four stars.

Campbell is a completely unlikable man, the Perfect Victim - a murder just waiting to happen! He makes himself thoroughly unpleasant quite regularly in the l 1931, #6 Lord Peter Wimsey, on holiday in Scotland, apa SUSPICIOUS CHARACTERS; an artists' colony in a wee town in Scotland is filled with odd stories, peculiar alibis, and confused police after the most unliked man in town gets himself messily murdered whilst painting a landscape. Classic timetable plot with a peculiar attitude, four stars.

Campbell is a completely unlikable man, the Perfect Victim - a murder just waiting to happen! He makes himself thoroughly unpleasant quite regularly in the little fishing town/artist's colony of Kirkcudbright, and does so once too often one dark night. Having gone on a bender, the alcohol brings out simply the worst of his irascible and somewhat ugly personality and he manages to totally infuriate most of his almost-friends and artists. One of them kills him, but there's a lot that happens in little Kirkcudbright that night, with the murder only the capping stone of "business".

I'm currently in the process of rereading several of my favorite "Golden Age of Detection" female authors' work, and while it's been about twenty years since I last read this one and didn't remember much of the actual plot, what I *did* remember, or thought I had, was that this was THE most boring of Sayers' books. She's always been one of my all-time favorite authors, and I wasn't really looking forward to it, but since I'm OCD and this one was next in sequence, well...

There are lots of reviews that will mention right off the top that "all the train business" was boring, and it is. And downright annoying, which it was. BUT. But. I think this novel is a great big joke on Sayers part, a satire of popular detective novel styles of the period. She was definitely "having us on", kwim?

This novel may have been the result of one of those dinners where several mystery/suspense writers/friends gather together, and after a few drinks begin to argue, and perhaps bet with each other. And somebody says that the optimum number of definite suspects in a mystery novel ought not be any more than two or three at any given time, and that it would make the story unworkable if there were more than that. And Sayers decided (or maybe there was a bet...) to write a mystery with not three, not four, but at least five definite "main suspects", and "make it work".

And it *does*, although the train stuff drove me mad (grin). And it does sort of stun the reader into missing several important bits of information (very necessary...). The first two-thirds of the novel are somewhat stodgy, although the pacing is actually rather sharp - all that timetable stuff overwhelms the reader, and you don't at first realize what's happening - the night-and-day after the murder is a damnably busy one for a sleepy little town! The alibis are all mixed up - most of the suspects don't have any, several sort-of do, one guy has far, far too many alibis... etc.

It isn't until you get to the last third or so of the novel, when The Authorities and Lord Peter set out to "reconstruct the crime" and each does so. Wimsey elects to reconstruct every happening of the night and day in a particularly splashy fashion, involving all the local bigwigs and policemen (!) into participating in various roles of suspects, murderee and murderer. Totally ludicrous IF you're wanting something believable, but entirely fun if you're watching how Sayers weaves her story. She takes the "gather all the suspects" sort of ending scene and spins it out over the last four chapters, throws in a rehash of the plot just previous to this as each policeman/VIP gives *their* impression/reconstruction of the crime, and then has Wimsey show them how it really was done, by actually, physically, reconstructing the crime!

It's a classic format but twisted, and her execution is brilliant, simply brilliant. And a heckuva lot of fun, IMO. Sayers obviously had a good time working this one out, and I had a good time (at the end, anyway) going along for the ride. Can't give it five stars, though, because all the timetable stuff is SO ubiquitous. And pretty nearly all the dialogue is written "in dialect" and it's eNORmously annoying! (Pet Peeve of mine, it mightn't bother you as much). Although both things might just have been Sayers' way of seeing just how far she could spin those then-very-popular elements out in a novel - it's way, way over-the-top, and readers of the period would likely have recognized this by the time they got almost to the end. Actually, this novel has far, far too much of pretty nearly *everything* then considered necessary for a "good" (or maybe "popular") mystery novel. And that was quite deliberate on Sayers' part.

BOTTOM LINE: Don't let its reputation or the timetable elements bother/worry you, skip over them if you must - it won't damage your enjoyment of the plot very much. Get yourself familiar with the Dramatis Personae and then carefully read the last half/third of the novel closely. It's well worth it. Recommended only for those with an odd sense of humor, and a good deal of patience, but it's worthwhile working your way to the end.

[NOTE: I number a series of novels only, not including the short story collections, thus this is the sixth novel although GR shows it as #7]
...more

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Aug 04, 2017 Teri-K rated it liked it

Shelves: historical-mystery, mystery, mystery-golden-age

I like this entry in the series fairly well. But then I'm the type of person who skims over railroad time tables and other minutiae without feeling guilty. I'm more interested in character and setting. Plus, thanks to a grandmother with a Masters in Art I immediately spotted the missing bit of information that is only revealed late in the book.

Still and all this is not one of Sayers' better books. Apparently she wrote it as a challenge, and all those details bored her as much as they bore the r ...more

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Feb 24, 2022 Bev rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, vintage-mystery, audionovel, british-mystery, mount-tbr-2022

Review of this particular audio version: 3.5 stars (though rounded up here)

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Nov 02, 2016 Bev rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: british-mystery, mystery, vintage-mystery, bought-2016

see review on another edition

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Jul 06, 2016 Deborah rated it liked it

Shelves: deb-s-sayers-challenge

Some of the language is hard to follow. Really enjoyed the reveal at the end.

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Aug 07, 2011 Bev rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, vintage-mystery, british-mystery

Five Red Herrings (aka Suspicious Characters when first released in the States) is Dorothy L Sayers' flirtation with a railroad tables crime. The first time I read it I spent a great deal of brain power trying to keep up with all the times and trains and didn't get it at all. In all subsequent readings (including this one), I take the times and trains and tickets as read and just sit back and enjoy the ride.

What we have is an apparently very simple death in Kirkcudbright, Scotland. After a night Five Red Herrings (aka Suspicious Characters when first released in the States) is Dorothy L Sayers' flirtation with a railroad tables crime. The first time I read it I spent a great deal of brain power trying to keep up with all the times and trains and didn't get it at all. In all subsequent readings (including this one), I take the times and trains and tickets as read and just sit back and enjoy the ride.

What we have is an apparently very simple death in Kirkcudbright, Scotland. After a night that well represents his life--quarreling with just about everyone he meets--Sandy Campbell, a local hot-headed artist, sets out for a little morning painting at one of his favorite spots. Later that afternoon his body is found lying on the pointed rocks along the stream just below his painting gear. It looks as though Sandy stepped a little too close to the cliff's edge while scrutinizing his morning's work and took a fatal tumble onto the rocks below.

But our favorite aristocratic sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, is on the spot enjoying a bit of holiday himself. One that turns into a busman's holiday when he can't stay away from the scene of the crime. It's Wimsey who first suggests that it might not be the simple accident that it appears. He first senses that something is wrong when an item very vital to the scene that has been set cannot be found--not among the dead man's gear nor anywhere in the area surrounding the "accident." There is also the fact that rigor would seem to indicated that the man has been dead long before the morning's painting. When all is said and done, there are six suspects--all fellow painters with reason to wish Campbell dead--it is up to Lord Peter to separate the five red herrings from the fish that must be netted for the crime.

Pairing a reading of this book with the filmed version starring Ian Carmichael is an absolute must at some point. In fact, this is one of the rare times that I would say that the filmed version outshines the book. In the novel Sayers goes through a very long and labored process at the end--taking the reader through every shred of evidence and showing how it might (or might not) apply to every single suspect. The film version condenses things down very nicely without losing any of the mystery. And it's worth the price of admission to see Wimsey recreate the murder using Bunter as the corpse (although the part of the corpse is played by Sir Maxwell in the book). "'Hi!' said the corpse. 'You shut up,' said Wimsey, 'you're dead.'

Another slightly tiresome bit is the dialect. After reading this one several times, I'm better able to sail through the broad Scots dialect...but, if that weren't enough, Sayers also provides us with a traveling salesman with a lisp. A bit too much, DLS, a bit too much. (Fortunately, the filmed version ditches the lisp as well).

Despite these two draw-backs, I still enjoy the story. It's nice to see Wimsey out of his British element (and to see Bunter wrestling with the local terms for various cooking supplies). I have a good time with the various artistic lessons we get--and it's much more entertaining than the education in campanology that we get in The Nine Tailors (not that I don't enjoy learning about bell-ringing, but it does go on a bit). And I love the reenactment of the crime. Four stars. ...more

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Sep 10, 2019 Zander rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This book was incredibly boring. Basically the whole novel could have been a short story and because there are five non-murderers who lie or just have really bad nights or misadventures the police and Wimsey go off after various red herrings. My eye started rolling back each time they started listing off train times. I barely made it though the book. Not to mention none of the characters were likable.

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