The Nine Tailors (Lord Peter Wimsey, #11) in Pick-a-Shelf

Feb 25, 2020 Nat rated it really liked it

Shelves: mystery

Pretty enjoyable, but didn't seem to have quite as much character as the others. This one was quite a bit longer, and spent a lot of time on how bell-ringing works, which I never came close to understanding. Luckily, an understanding wasn't really that necessary to follow the plot. While these books are enjoyable, something I'm noticing is there's never quite as much intrigue or as many layers as, say, an Agatha Christie. There were really only a couple options for what had happened and only a c ...more

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Nov 30, 2011 Kerri rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-or-period, realistic-or-contemporary, mystery, 2-star, school-books

This book actually isn't that bad. It's mildly enjoyable, manages to dodge the most annoying mystery cliches, and has a very clever ending. Yet, I gave it two stars.

My English teacher loves this book, and I can see why. However, he warned the class that it takes a long time for the action to start. The beginning seems utterly boring, but pay attention because there are clues scattered everywhere. He was absolutely right. The mystery finally shows itself on page 88, and everything before that
This book actually isn't that bad. It's mildly enjoyable, manages to dodge the most annoying mystery cliches, and has a very clever ending. Yet, I gave it two stars.

My English teacher loves this book, and I can see why. However, he warned the class that it takes a long time for the action to start. The beginning seems utterly boring, but pay attention because there are clues scattered everywhere. He was absolutely right. The mystery finally shows itself on page 88, and everything before that is pretty dry. That's not too bad considering that the book is 397 pages, but this is definitely not a quick read or an action fluff. If you are very impatient, don't read this book because the pay-off arrives very late. However, every mystery aficionado should give this a try, because the mystery is quite intriguing, and the twist ending might make it worth your while.

The Nine Tailors is extremely meticulous in its world building. It goes through long lengths to explain the culture Fenchurch St. Paul and the novelty (to many) of change-ringing. This change-ringing thing is rather quaint and interesting concept to learn about, but gets tedious quickly when there are entire blocks of text solely devoted to bells. This is the part that would probably turn off many people, because reading pages about bells is either very fascinating or extremely painful and boring. And when you need to memorize trivial details to do well on reading quizzes, this gets annoying pretty quickly.

Then there is the boatload of minor characters, most of which play a vital part in the mystery. Keeping all the names straight is a chore, but that wasn't my problem. My complaint is that many of these characters love to ramble. Especially the Rector, Mr Venables, who is quite proud of his church and will spend paragraphs pointing out the things he loves or giving his opinions to the main character. For the Rector, the rambling establishes him as a passionate and kind but rather scatter-brained person while giveing him a quirk. And in real life, people do ramble a lot; most don't speak in conveniently concise sentences like they might in fiction. However, all this rambling means that there is way too much unnecessary information to slog through.

All the detail about the bell ringing and what-not makes the Nine Tailors a slow read, and to me it is too long, too detailed, and has too many dull parts.

I didn't have any problems with the characters. Most didn't have much page-time, but Dorothy Sayers somehow manages to quickly establish a distinct personality for each of them, even the parrot. I'm especially fond of a certain crook, honorable thief that he is. On the other hand, since this is the ninth book in the Peter Wimsey series, I feel as if I'm missing out on the real character of Wimsey and his butler Bunter. I'm pretty sure they are much more interesting in some of the other books, but I only saw hints of that in Nine Tailors. But since their characters have already been established in the first books, it's entirely my fault that I haven't read them. What I like about Wimsey is that he lets the reader into his thought process. I loathe it when I'm left in the dark until the last few pages, where the detective suddenly reveals his conclusion (in no less than 3 pages) and smooshes a lot of random clues together. Instead of that, Wimsey spends many paragraphs in speculation, but only uses one concise paragraph to conclude the mystery. Of course the downside is that some readers might figure it out faster than Wimsey. Generally, most don't connect all the dots until the second-to-last page, so it shouldn't be a problem. I was able to figure out everything but the method of murder, and was still pleased with the ending.

The ending is the best part of the book, but don't believe in the hype that I or other reviewers are giving, because if you do you might just get underwhelmed.

Generally, my opinion of specific books goes down over time as the excitement fades away and I start to see flaws. For Nine Tailors, I've actually grown more fond of the book with time. Still, 2 stars. I'm not going to properly reread this book ever again; now that I know the twist, I don't see the point. Since re-readability is very important to me, this factor knocked off some stars. I can't personally recommend this to many people; Nine Tailors is definitely not for everybody, and many of my classmates hated bells with a passion after finishing this book. However, it has fired a small interest of mystery within me. I want to get my hands on another Peter Wimsey book, try some Agatha Christie, and even sample Sherlock Holmes. All the classics. I'll probably feel very grateful to The Nine Tailors later down the road.

If you ever get confused about the bell business and technical terms, use the internet and youtube to clarify things. Please. The book would definitely not be fun if you, say, didn't know what a sally was. ...more

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