Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is one of the best “first novels” around, and introduces an unforgettable character, Lord Peter Wimsey. The mysteries he gets involved in have become classics of the mystery genre, and this is where it all began.

Lord Peter first learns about an odd occurrence when an architect named Phipps finds a body in his bathtub, naked except for a pince nez (eyeglasses without any ear pieces, they just sit on the bridge of the nose and pinch it). Inspector Sugg thinks it may be the body of a missing financier, Sir Reuben Levy, whose case is being looked at by Charles Parker, a friend of Wimsey’s. But it turns it to be someone else entirely. And yet, there is is something odd about the case, and the bodies may be linked in some way.

One of the side-plots has to do with Wimsey’s experiences in World War I. After World War II and the Cold War, it seems so very distant, but it marked those involved in ways that they generally never got over, which this book shows very well. If you have ever wondered what was wrong with people who appeased Hitler when “obviously” they should have fought back against him earlier, you need to understand this history.



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