Lord Peter Views the Body - SPOILER thread

[Judy]

This is a spoiler thread for Lord Peter Views the Body. If you haven't read the book yet, please be aware that spoilers will be posted openly and discussed in this thread.

Also, please say which short story you are posting about at the start of your post. Thanks everyone!

[Judy]

This is about the first short story, The Abominable History of the Man with Copper Fingers.

When reading this, I was startled by the similarities with the James Bond novel/film Goldfinger - both the title and the method of murder, by covering a woman in precious metal. It also really feels more like a spy story than a mystery - when Lord Peter confronts the villain in his lab and he ends up being destroyed in his own vat, again it's just like a Bond story. I can just see the film scene!

I did a bit of Googling and found I wasn't the first person to wonder about this connection. At Google Books, I read an essay from Dorothy L. Sayers: The Centenary Celebration .

This piece is 'Butler, Dabbler, Spy' by William F. Love, which has quite a bit about the possible influence of the story on Goldfinger. He also looks at possible connections between Jeeves and Wooster, Wimsey and Bond, hence the essay title.

tinyurl.com/jzqq4n9

I think it would be interesting to read this whole collection of essays.

[Everyman]

Judy wrote: "This is about the first short story, The Abominable History of the Man with Copper Fingers...."

I was frankly disappointed. The plot seemed so farfetched that I was unable to suspend disbelief sufficiently to enjoy the story.

Later stories in the series are much better. But this isn't the post to discuss them!

[Mark Pghfan]

I agree, this first story was just a bit too fantastic for Lord P. I wonder who Sayers was channeling when she wrote this one!

[Mark Pghfan]

I agree, this first story was just a bit too fantastic for Lord P. I wonder who Sayers was channeling when she wrote this one!

[HJ]

I found this collection of short stories interesting (although I prefer full-length books to short stories). Some of them I felt did not really reflect the character of Lord Peter as we've been getting to know him, though, and I wondered whether DLS had some ideas which she thought were good plots and wrote them as LPW stories because he was a popular character.

The one which brought me up short was the last story, The Cave of Ali Baba, which has LPW pretending to be dead for over two years! That seemed too long a period to me, even if one accepts that the serious nature of the gang he was infiltrating was worth faking his own death for (I am not sure that it was, frankly).

He was at least 39 if not 40 by the time he could come to life again, which (from memory) I think is fudged somewhat for the first of the Harriet Vane books, Strong Poison, since I don't think of him as being quite that old then.

[Susan]

It was a fantastic start to the collection - wasn't it? Perhaps it was chosen as it was felt such an 'exciting' or unusual story would draw readers in? I also thought of "Goldfinger" and wondered if they had taken the idea from this.

[Sandy]

Re 'the Copper Fingers': The Flavia DeLuce series by Alan Bradley had a short ebook that used a similar means of death, The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse. I wonder if Sayers was the first or if she got the idea from an earlier writer.

Flavia is an enjoyable series if you like precocious 11-year olds in the 1950's.

[Sandy]

I'm listening to the book on audio and in looking for the title of the stories using my old paperback, I've found differences! Further investigation is needed to determine if its just the order. I can see one story has a crossword that would not work well in audio.

[Michelle]

Sandy wrote: "I'm listening to the book on audio and in looking for the title of the stories using my old paperback, I've found differences! Further investigation is needed to determine if its just the order. I ..."

The crossword story drove me mad. Clever idea but too much focus on the clues that needed too much knowledge that we don't have today, classical education sort of thing. I'm afraid I skipped all of that!

[Damaskcat]

HJ wrote: "I found this collection of short stories interesting (although I prefer full-length books to short stories). Some of them I felt did not really reflect the character of Lord Peter as we've been get..."


I've just started reading Strong Poison and LP says he is approaching 40 which would seem to fit.

[Damaskcat]

Sandy wrote: "I'm listening to the book on audio and in looking for the title of the stories using my old paperback, I've found differences! Further investigation is needed to determine if its just the order. I ..."

The Crossword story is in my audio edition but you don't get the solution, just the clues.

[Betsy]

DL Sayers must have been a genius to come up with the details that she did for the Crossword Story. I can't believe what that would have taken to come up with that and in a short story besides.

BRAVO!

[Everyman]

Michelle wrote: The crossword story drove me mad. Clever idea but too much focus on the clues that needed too much knowledge that we don't have today, classical education sort of thing. I'm afraid I skipped all of that!"

I loved the childlike eagerness of the solvers. I didn't try to solve the puzzle myself (my father loved those English crossword puzzles but they're not my pleasure), but I did enjoy looking at the answers and figuring out how they worked out.

English crossword puzzles are totally different from American ones. In America, the clues are all basically definitions. In the English, they're all mini-mysteries. A simple one, for example, might be "Mrs. Renard's formal attire." The answer, of course, would be foxglove. Some of the Sunday Times ones are fiendish. But my father was excellent at them; a reliable Christmas gift for him was the annual collection of the Times puzzles which they published in paperback and we had to have our English relatives get for us since there was no Internet to order on back then! He would do them on graph paper so as not to have to write in the book, and when he had solved them all he would pass the book on to a friend who was almost as fanatic about them as he was.

[Susan]

Everyman, I had NO idea that English crossword puzzles were different from American ones. My husband is also a crossword fiend and loves the Times ones the best, but they are difficult...

[Damaskcat]

Everyman wrote: "Michelle wrote: The crossword story drove me mad. Clever idea but too much focus on the clues that needed too much knowledge that we don't have today, classical education sort of thing. I'm afraid ..."

I didn't know they were different either! That is my one new thing learned today :-)

[Everyman]

Here's a typical English crossword puzzle
https://www.theguardian.com/crossword...

And a typical American one
http://puzzles.usatoday.com/
(you may need to find on the page, or you can look in any American newspaper)

Two main things to notice: 1, the dramatic difference in the grids. The English don't have blocks of clues, but the clues cross with plenty of black dividing blocks. 2, the clues are very different in nature.

[Mark Pghfan]

I had listened to the audio version long ago, but didn't remember a whole lot. I started reading the actual stories for this discussion, but thought I would fill in with the audio. Sadly, they don't seem to be in the same order and only 9 of the 12 stories are there as well. Back to reading the book...

I also gave up on the crossword business, as it seemed too much work for light reading!

[Susan]

I didn't really enter into the crossword clues as such, but I did enjoy the way that the characters became so enthusiastic about 'the chase.' Not sure I would have appreciated a relative playing that kind of trick with his will though. I would never have worked any of it out. Or even worked out that there WAS something to work out...

[Mark Pghfan]

If there are any Christie fans out there, there was a similar short story of hers called, I think, the Case of the Missing Will. In it, the testator made a will in which there was a challenge for the beneficiary to figure out where a fortune was hidden. Note that there is a TV version of this story that is nothing like the actual story!

[Susan]

Yes, that's right, Pghfan, I do remember it has many similarities. As we have said before, though, Golden Age books were - essentially - puzzles and authors took the clues very seriously and took each other to task about cheating, etc. I think that was probably just a reflection of the popularity of those type of puzzles and there were probably more if we looked for them.

[Judy]

This is about the second story, The Entertaining Episode of the Article in Question.

As I've just said in the other thread, I wasn't a big fan of this story, but I was interested to see that the plot solution involves a female impersonator - another quite daring storyline after the first story also pushed the boundaries.

Seems as if Sayers had fun thinking up outrageous twists for these stories. The tiny mistake in French which solves the whole mystery is a very Holmesian touch, but I felt the plot of this story just has too many coincidences!.

[Sandy]

Judy wrote: "This is about the second story, The Entertaining Episode of the Article in Question.

As I've just said in the other thread, I wasn't a big fan of this story, but I was interested to see that the ..."

I agree about the coincidences: maybe LP knew everybody the villain could have worked for, and any of them would have invited LP to the wedding but it was a stretch to make her such a good friend. I loved the elderly woman and her response to being undressed and put to bed!

I would never have caught the French error and it would not have come across in a translation, perhaps why the French was not translated. I was never any good in my French classes and thought memorizing the gender of inanimate objects was silly. (I realize that was not the villain's mistake, but it brought back all my frustration.)

So far I like the LP books better than the stories, but they quick little treats to be fitted into your day.

[Susan]

You do feel that author's expected more of their readers back then. I am currently reading a book about Lewis Carroll and that mentions his concerns of translating Alice in Wonderland into French/German and whether the language would make sense in French.

I also prefer the novels to the stories, but they are fun. My favourite was "The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head."

[Sandy]

Susan wrote: "You do feel that author's expected more of their readers back then. I am currently reading a book about Lewis Carroll and that mentions his concerns of translating Alice in Wonderland into French/G..."

In anticipation of the crossword story, yes, I think more was expected of readers!

[Susan]

Re the second story, I know that LP had to wait for the crime to actually be committed, but he seemed to enjoy all the mayhem that erupted on the morning of the actual wedding a little too much! I know it is fiction, but I suspect that, even if he could have arranged things so it caused less disruption, he probably wouldn't have - shades of Fen perhaps.

[Damaskcat]

I think many authors do try out their more outlandish ideas in short stories.

I agree with the comments about authors expecting more of their readers than perhaps authors do now.

[Everyman]

Judy wrote: "Seems as if Sayers had fun thinking up outrageous twists for these stories. ..."

that's my main thought as I read through the stories. The novels are all fairly normal (as far as mystery novels are ever normal) in terms of the plots, nothing bizarre or outlandish. But several of these stories go far beyond what one might realistically expect to see in life. They border on fantasy, which surprises me for her day and age.

[Judy]

I agree, Damaskcat and Everyman - some of the short stories are almost surreal and hard to swallow on any realistic level.

Susan, I like your comparison with Fen - there is the same sense of mischief with Wimsey at times, which I suspect both of them partly took from Holmes!

[Judy]

Re the 'Bone of Contention' story, I was interested to see that the plot hinges on a will, which is mislaid until it suddenly turns up in surprising circumstances. Eccentric/missing wills seem to feature in so many detective stories, including our other current read, The Moving Toyshop. I wonder how often wills like these were actually made in real life?

Also, I wondered what anyone thinks of the explanation of the ghostly horses in this one. Although I loved the whole idea of the ghostly carriage, I find it hard to believe that this would actually work in real life! Surely you might well able to spot the horse's heads even if they were black - any moonlight might literally shed light on the deception?!

[Everyman]

Judy wrote: "Eccentric/missing wills seem to feature in so many detective stories, .."

Which in a way is natural. Most detective stories involve death, which means a will (or the lack thereof) is a natural potential element. And murders (at least mystery murders, which are done for a purpose and not at random, or else they would be too hard to solve) are done only for a few reasons, money being a central reason, which usually means the will or lack of will is an element. And since a plain Jane vanilla will is pretty uninteresting, eccentric or unusual wills (or the hiding thereof) add some spice to the story.

So it's not surprising that so many mysteries have that as an element.

[Everyman]

Judy wrote: "Also, I wondered what anyone thinks of the explanation of the ghostly horses in this one. Although I loved the whole idea of the ghostly carriage, I find it hard to believe that this would actually work in real life!."

I agree it was a bit hard to swallow, but then we're in rural England in the 1930s in an area where superstition seems to have been rampant (and Polly shying at the Dead Man's post added to that notion that there was something supernatural happening on the common), so maybe people wouldn't have been too eager to examine the phenomenon.

[Susan]

I loved the 'ghostly' horses and yes, I agree that rural superstition about places does exist. My grandparents had a farm in Ireland and there was a certain crossroads people disliked passing at night, so I could see that would work.

I did wonder whether it was a novel which got abandoned too, Judy? It could easily have been extended to become a novel I thought.

[Michelle]

possibly less light about, fewer street lamps and so on so it would be darker than now. I did find that aspect a bit unbelievable though!

[Susan]

I wonder whether there were street lights then, in such a rural area? They tried to standardise street lighting in 1935 apparently, but I would imagine most were still gas lit outside of central London - much more atmospheric for crime books...

[Sandysbookaday (taking a step back for a while)]

Sandy wrote: "Re 'the Copper Fingers': The Flavia DeLuce series by Alan Bradley had a short ebook that used a similar means of death, The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse. I wonder if Sayers was..."

I have read and enjoyed a couple of the Flavia books.

I have just finished the Learned Adventure of the Dragons Head, and it has definitely been my favourite story in this collection so far.

Re the ghostly horses....I wonder how easy it would have been for the horses to gallop with bags of (was it sawdust?) on their feet? This was perhaps a little far fetched.....

[Betsy]

The Undignified Melodrama of the Bone of Contention had a lot of things that you had to take with a grain of salt, but I loved the scene when Polly Flinders (horse) is so terrified of continuing on the road and stops at the Dead Man's Post. To me that is the real LP - the way he talked to the horse to calm it down and get past that supernatural area. Peter uses his persona of a lightweight, addle-brained individual to good effect, but in this scene he is his true self - - a caring person who hides behind another persona to achieve what he wants.

[Judy]

Betsy, I loved that scene too, and his personality really does come through, as you say.

I noticed he makes a joke to the horse about how if she is picking up on his feelings then his nerves must be in a rotten state. I think somewhere in this story it says that he is supposed to be staying in the country for a rest, so possibly he really has been having nervous trouble again and this is a little bit of black humour?

[Susan]

I have read that sawdust was used outside houses if someone was ill or dying, to muffle the sound of horses hooves. Not sure if they would tolerate it tied around their feet though. Although, apparently, in Japan sawdust sandals were used to muffle their noise, so perhaps they would have:

http://hoofcare.blogspot.co.uk/2013/0...

[Betsy]

Considering what he and so many thousands of other men went through during the war, it wouldn't be surprising to me that he would have nervous problems the rest of his life. The scene in another story with Harriet Vane, Busman's Honeymoon is very telling about the burden he carries from his investigations and his past.

[Judy]

Yes, indeed, I remember that scene - look forward to discussing that book when we get there as it is one of my favourites. I think the bad nerves are something that flare up repeatedly through the books.

[Susan]

I think at the beginning of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club an 'old soldier' is quite dismissive of what an acquaintance of LP's has suffered during the Great War and that is an interesting insight into how warfare changed quite quickly. I would imagine that LP's shellshock would never quite go away and I think that other novels have dealt with these issues well - River of Darkness being one that springs to mind.

[Damaskcat]

Judy wrote: "Re the 'Bone of Contention' story, I was interested to see that the plot hinges on a will, which is mislaid until it suddenly turns up in surprising circumstances. Eccentric/missing wills seem to f..."

I think you underestimate how much our night skies are lit up by the glow of street lamps etc. When the story was written if you were out in the country it would have been pitch black if there was no moon. It still is to a certain extent if you get far enough away from a town.

Also street lights never used to be left on all night. When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s street lamps used to go off about 11.00pm and come back on about 5.00am.

[Damaskcat]

Susan wrote: "I have read that sawdust was used outside houses if someone was ill or dying, to muffle the sound of horses hooves. Not sure if they would tolerate it tied around their feet though. Although, appar..."

I think it was bran not sawdust that was used to muffle their hooves and I think that would work as I'm sure I've read about it in another context.

[Susan]

That's interesting, Damaskcat. I remember thinking it was a nice idea (respectful is perhaps a better way to put it) to muffle the sound in houses where people were ill, or there had just been a death.

[Damaskcat]

Susan wrote: "That's interesting, Damaskcat. I remember thinking it was a nice idea (respectful is perhaps a better way to put it) to muffle the sound in houses where people were ill, or there had just been a de..."

Yes it was a nice idea:-)

[Sandy]

Re: Bone of Contention. I enjoyed the story but found I had to suspend belief often. Luckily I don't mind in this genre.

First, why would anyone write such a will! The Moving Toyshop also had a silly will, but Crispin had an explanation. And then why didn't the sons fight over burial vs. crypt.

Then I thought the spectral coach and horses would not work in reality and even trying the scheme depended on moonless nights occurring just when needed. And I doubt that the sounds of hoofs, tires and rigging could be completely muffled.

The horse shying at the crossroads is also unrealistic (of course I know nothing about horses!), but common practice in stories. That and clearing the horse hoof allowed Sayers to show Whimsey's true character.

[Sandy]

Re: Dragon's Head
I loved this story mostly because of Whimsey's interaction with his nephew. He shows such consideration for the boy's feelings and maturity. I expect this is the same nephew we meet in Gaudy Night and the relationship remained strong.

[Everyman]

Sandy wrote: "Re: Dragon's Head
I loved this story mostly because of Whimsey's interaction with his nephew. He shows such consideration for the boy's feelings and maturity. I expect this is the same nephew we me..."

Yes. What schoolboy wouldn't love to have an uncle like Peter!

[Susan]

I also loved the way his nephew's respect for his uncle climbed as the story went on - suggesting he knew virtually nothing about his sleuthing activities before the story began.