Dorothy L. Sayer, published 1932

I have a mixed relationship with Dorothy L. Sayers’ novels. I really enjoyed the first five or so of her Whimsy novels and was fascinated by the portrayal of PTSD and the trauma from World War One in her earlier books – a level of psychological insight rare for early crime fiction. I also thought the plots were well structured and fast passed enough to keep my interest, even with more padding than the novels of Christie for example. I also have read far too much queer crime fiction and found Whimsy and Bunter’s relationship just ripe for romance (in the style of KJ Charles or Cat Sebastian for choice) which was fun.

However, I have to admit that I could not finish Five Red Herrings. And I almost never ever don’t finish a book, however bad it may be. Five Red Herrings is not bad mind, but I could not get invested in the twists and turns, running all around Scotland, train timetables and bad-tempered artists who I could never tell apart and remember who is whom. Am I curious as to what the missing item at the scene of the crime is? Yes. Do I want to have read one of the classic crime classics that forms part of the whole cultural movement? Yes. But not enough to continue. Also, there’s Wikipedia.

But I listened to and really enjoyed Murder Must Advertise whilst on holiday and so decided to go back and catch up on the novels in between – Have His Carcase and Nine Tailors. It is also worth noting that as a skim reader, I don’t always pronounce words correctly – as when I told my parents as a young teen about this great book which I had read about a detective called Hercules Poydroit. I don’t think this excuse works here, but until I started listening to the book, I had read the title as Have his Car-Case and pictured something in line with the short story “The Fantastic Horror of the Cat in the Bag” – if Christie copied her short stories to create novels on occasion, why not Sayers? Luckily, as I was listening to this on Audible, I discovered my mistake straight away and didn’t spend time wondering about when any car cases (whatever they may be) were going to appear. Carcase, when pronounced correctly, makes a lot more sense for a murder mystery too.

The novel is an enjoyable read, and much like Five Red Herrings and the later Murder Must Advertise (I haven’t read Nine Tailors yet so am withholding judgment) the reader really gets a sense of Sayers the author coming through the narrative, anchoring the novel as part of the genre and the time it was written it, complete with references to other fictional detectives and their personal style of detection. The presence of Harriet Vane makes these references less jarring than they may be, and her attempts at detecting whilst reflecting on how easy her fictional detective has it invites the reader to be part of the joke.

The plot too, is sardonic, playing on the already well known twist of the most obvious suspect having an unbreakable alibi, and the big ‘solution’ of the novel is inarguably ingenious (plus I worked it out at least half a page before Harriet did). There is also a lot of ciphers and codebreaking featured as part of the plot and here I must say, listing to the book rather than reading it became a slight problem. It’s not so much that I felt the need to see the two by two squares with letters that the narrator described – being able to visualise the codes and the way to crack them probably would have been helpful, but I would have had no luck in solving them on my own even with that – but having what must have been 5 minutes of the narrator saying letter by letter by letter without break was an sufferance. I do have to praise Jane McDowell for her tone whilst reading the long list of letters – she was able to convey a sense of importance and significance to each letter, even if they meant nothing at all to me.

Have his Carcase is a fun Wimsey classic, maybe not one of the most memorable of Sayer’s books or her most clever plots but it’s worth reading and it is enjoyable, especially if you enjoy codes and ciphers.