Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers

reviewed by Sarah
avaliable here
Start Date: July 23
Finish Date: July 27
Star rating: 8 stars, because Lord Peter is awesome

"Mr. Parker has a new trick: The Vanishing Financier. Absolutely no deception. Hey, presto, pass! and where is he? Will some gentleman from the audience kindly step upon the platform and inspect the cabinet? Thank you, sir. The quickness of the 'and deceives the heye."

"I'm afraid mine isn't much of a story," said Parker. "It's just one of those simple things that offer no handle. Sir Reuben Levy dined last night with three friends at the Ritz. After dinner the friends went to the theatre. He refused to go with them on account of an appointment. I haven't yet been able to trace the appointment, but anyhow, he returned home to his house—9 Park Lane—at twelve o'clock."

"Who saw him?"

"The cook, who had just gone up to bed, saw him on the doorstep and heard him let himself in. He walked upstairs, leaving his greatcoat on the hall peg and his umbrella in the stand—you remember how it rained last night. He undressed and went to bed. Next morning he wasn't there. That's all," said Parker abruptly, with a wave of the hand.

"It isn't all, it isn't all. Daddy, go on, that's not half a story," pleaded Lord Peter.

"But it is all. When his man came to call him he wasn't there... . So one is forced to suppose that a respectable middle-aged Hebrew financier either went mad between twelve and six a. m. and walked quietly out of the house in his birthday suit on a November night, or else was spirited away like the lady in the 'Ingoldsby Legends,' body and bones, leaving only a heap of crumpled clothes behind him."

"Was the front door bolted?"

"That's the sort of question you would ask, straight off; it took me an hour to think of it. No; contrary to custom, there was only the Yale lock on the door...."

"And that's really all?"

"Really all. Except for one very trifling circumstance."

"I love trifling circumstances," said Lord Peter, with childish delight.



To me, this book is best summed up thus: Sir Percy Blakeney investigates crime. Except his name is Lord Peter Wimsey and his butler is the one who bothers about his clothes, because he doesn't actually care. And it takes place in the early(ish) 1900s, as opposed to late 1700s.

I just wish the others were in the public domain, and on Librivox, so I could listen to them at work. Ah, well. *sigh*