From the Bookshelf of Reading the Detectives…

The Nine Tailors (Lord Peter Wimsey, #11)

Dorothy L. Sayers,

Elizabeth George (Introduction)

Start date: May 1, 2023

Finish date: May 31, 2023

Discussion: Group Challenges

Why we're reading this: Next in our Scenes of Classic Crime challenge.
[close] Next in our Scenes of Classic Crime challenge.

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Showing 2 of 166 topics — 7,784 comments total

Group Challenges

* Sept 25: The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) by Agatha Christie
By Susan · 14 posts · 16 views

last updated Sep 02, 2025 12:08AM

* Sept 25: The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) - SPOILER Thread
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last updated Sep 01, 2025 04:16PM

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What Members Thought

Dec 05, 2014 Louise Culmer rated it liked it

Lord Peter Wimsey finds himself in a fen village, investigating the mystery of a missing necklace and an unidentified corpse. The mystery meanders along in a leisurely fashion, intertwined with a lot of detail about village life, and in particular bell ringing. Some of the village characters are entertaining, particularly the Rector and his wife, who would be quite at home in a Barbara Pym novel. The solution to the murder becomes apparent well before the end of the book, why Wimsey himself does ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Aug 20, 2020 Brenda rated it liked it

Shelves: golden-age-mystery-etc, on-my-shelf

I love the character of Wimsey, and I really liked the first half of the book, but felt the second half kind of slogged on and got a bit depressing. I really don’t know anything about bell ringing either so that jargon was all over my head and I just read over those parts.

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Jul 23, 2014 Julie Durnell rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: england-uk, mystery

This was my firt Dorothy Sayers book, and it was worth the read. The plot was excellent albeit a little confusing list of characters. I have to admit to skimming over most of the bells information. She must have done a lot of research for that!

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May 27, 2017 Elizabeth added it

One of the best Lord Wimsey! Highly recommended.

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Sep 01, 2018 jaadhimalli rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: top_100_crime_cwa

Nine tailors - signifies the number of times a bell tolls to indicate death of a man. For a woman its six.

At the beginning of each chapter the author quotes some bell ringing terminology and process. Having no clue about bell ringing, I could not understand what it meant. The mystery however had a turn that I did not expect. It was nice to see Lord Peter Wimsey portrayed as a noble human and not just royal folk with privileges.

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