Too long

[Kate]

While I liked the book overall, it took MUCH too long to come to the ending. Also, the ubiquitous use of phonetically spelled Scottish became tiresome after awhile - slowed things down too much.

[MaryJo]

well, the 1st update in years! but, here it goes. this book came back to me with a recent rental of the movie done with Ian Charmichael. the book and the movie were fantastic, I thought, both of them. yes, they were both long, with wonderful character development, plot development, and a great solution and conclusion. true, one had to be patient and if you do not enjoy this sort of detail, this book by Sayers would not be at the top of your list.

[Marne]

I've got to say that the length was one of the things I appreciated most about this book! Often when reading mysteries, you don't get a sense of the characters as having real lives apart from being pawns in the author's game. In this book, and most of Sayers' mysteries that I've read, I sometimes forgot that I was reading a mystery and just became engrossed in the details of the characters' lives for their own sake.

[MaryJo]

well put, Marne. me too!

[Lesley]

Writing phonetic dialect was pretty common when this book was written (those quaint rural types!).
I believe Dorothy Sayers wrote this book because she had been criticised for spending too much time on the characters and the romance between Lord Peter and Harriet Vane, so this was all clues and detection.