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When I last read Dorothy L Sayers' The Nine Tailors, I had no idea what the art of change-ringing was, and happily allowed all the novel's complicated references and descriptions sail over my head. These days, thanks to Google, I was better able to inform myself. Change-ringing involves ringing a set of bells in an ever-changing sequence -- it's more to do with mathematics than music, running through every possible permutation of the order in which they can be rung. To me, the ringing of church bells is one of the most glorious sounds in the world: I cherish the memory of hearing bells ring out on a cloudless autumn's day in Avignon. But apparently change-ringing is a particularly English obsession!
This is perhaps the ultimate 'cosy' English mystery, centred on a country church in the fens of East Anglia. (As an aside, I note that Kevin Crossley-Holland's Waterslain Angels, which also featured cherubim on -- along? under? -- a church roof, was likewise set in the Fens. Is this a peculiarity of East Anglian churches? Google has thus far been unable to answer this question.) Several volumes in to the series, Lord Peter has thankfully shed most of his annoying mannerisms and become good company, though he has acquired yet another improbable skill to his repertoire -- he is an accomplished (though rusty) bell-ringer, as well as an amazing cricketer, expert on old books etc etc. But I forgive him.
No Harriet Vane in this book, though she first appeared several novels ago in Strong Poison. I don't think we had Strong Poison in our school library, though I certainly remember Gaudy Night (from which book, along with Brideshead Revisited, I formed all my ideas about life in Oxford. Oh dear.)
I think I must get my hands on Strong Poison. Perhaps Harriet Vane has already mellowed him? Also I want to read Murder Must Advertise, which has a cricket match in it. Lots of catching up to do!
*The nine tailors, or nine single strokes of the bell, are tolled to mark the death of a man. For a woman, it's six.
This was the first Peter Wimsey book I read, thanks to N. Marlow. The solution to the murder is fairly bonkers as I recall, but it can't have put me off because I then worked my way through the whole series.
ReplyDeleteI suspect I might have come to it the same way! Apparently the murder solution is not actually scientifically possible, but it does sound like a horrifying way to go.
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