The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Nine Tailors
Book Review: "You ain't got no call to be afeared of the bells...if you follow righteousness."
Summary: 4 Stars
Set in the remote village of Fenchurch St. Paul, this 1934 mystery involves an unknown body, which has been disfigured and mysteriously buried in the same grave as a local woman, shortly after the New Year. Many years before, a magnificent necklace of emeralds was stolen here, though it was never found. Two men and a local woman were implicated in the theft, and both men served time in prison. Now the unknown body, the fate of the two men involved in the theft of the emeralds, the whereabouts of the necklace, and the involvement of seemingly upright citizens of Fenchurch St. Paul are all under investigation.
Lord Peter Wimsey, accompanied by his "man" Bunter, becomes involved in the investigation when their car runs off the road on a snowy New Year's Eve. Lord Peter ultimately agrees to substitute for an indisposed bell-ringer when the rector attempts to set a record of more than 18,000 rings in nine hours as a New Year's Eve celebration. The bells are an integral part of the mystery, with the "nine tailors," a pattern of bell ringing, figuring prominently in the action. A coded letter suggests that the bells themselves may be connected to the emerald necklace.
Author Dorothy Sayers creates vivid characters--the somewhat arrogant Lord Peter Wimsey, his faithful manservant Bunter, the "forgetful" rector of the local church and his wife, the French wife and children of one of the thieves, assorted odd characters from the town, and local law enforcement. The opportunity to locate the emeralds and ascertain the fate of the thieves, one of whom escaped shortly after being sentenced to jail, intrigues Lord Peter, and some townspeople have much to gain (or lose), depending on the identity of the man in the grave and his possible killer. Sayers's complex mystery and the equally complex interactions of the various characters keep the reader guessing to the very end.
Ingenious and clever, this mystery is full of dry humor, as Lord Peter and Bunter engage in word play, hilarious who's-on-first dialogue, and multiple absurdities as they try to solve the case. The characters go beyond stereotype, eliciting sympathy and often respect, as they contrast with the sometimes stuffy and aristocratic Lord Peter. A mystery which is as satisfying in its conclusion (resembling the divine intervention of classical Greek tragedy) as it is in its immediate action, The Nine Tailors is one of Sayers's best and most intricate mysteries. n Mary Whipple
Book Review: 9 Taylors
Summary: 5 Stars
This was my first but not my last Lord Wimsey novel. I heard a review of this on NPR and being a fan of Poriot I figured I would give this a try.
I was very surprised how fast my first 27 pages were. I was reading about ringing bells (a subject I can say I have little interest in) and found the writting stlye so tight well written that the time went fast.
I have now started from the begining and plan to read them all.
Book Review: A Great Mystery
Summary: 5 Stars
As a homeschooling family, we've heard a lot about Dorothy Sayers through the years. I was really surprised to discover that she was the same Dorothy Sayers who wrote all the Peter Wimsey mysteries. Like I imagined her writing would be, this book is fun and educational.
The Nine Tailors is a detective story along the lines of Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Peroit. Her Lord Peter Wimsey is a smart, finicky, very British aristocrat who doesn't seem to have much else to do except try to find a "bit of fun" by being a detective. He reminds me a bit of the American Columbo (but before Columbo), asking questions that seem so innocent that it gets people talking and gets them caught on their own stories.
Mrs. Sayers makes the English village come alive with all kinds of interesting characters and great dialogue. One of my favorite passages in the book is a dialogue between the town's rector and an older woman of the town. When he tells her that we shouldn't question the ways of Providence, the woman replies, "Don't yew talk to me about Providence. I've had enough o' Providence. First he took my husband, and then he took my `taters, but there's One above as'll teach him to mend his manners, if he don't look out."
The story behind the mystery is a story about the English method of church-bell ringing, which is really more mathematical than musical according to the participants, though of course, music and math are always closely related. But the men work out the patterns using permutations of the numbers of the bells, not thinking so much about the actual notes of the bells themselves. Each man also takes his bell very seriously, learning through the generations about the personalities of the various bells. All the bells have names, and regardless of the name itself, all the bells are women. The town in the story is Fenchurch St. Paul (a fictional place) with a 130 foot church steeple and eight bells. The biggest bell is named Tailor Paul, and when someone dies, they ring Tailor Paul nine times, hence the name of the book. Because what would a good mystery be without an unexplained death or two?
I enjoyed very much learning about the patterns for the church bells, but I also very much enjoyed the mystery. I hate mysteries where I have figured it out before the detective, so I was very pleased with myself that I figured out the murderer at exactly the same time as Lord Peter. The book was very well-written, fast-paced, with a healthy dose of British wit. I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone, and I'm looking forward to my next Lord Peter Wimsey mystery.
Book Review: A Great Mystery Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
I haven't read a mystery novel in ages and this one got me aching for more. Sayers' main character, Lord Peter Wimsey is embraceable because he exhibits a wide range of emotions. The other main characters in this tale - Pastor Venables, Superintendent Blundell - are charming, this charm brought forth by the former's humurous chatter and the latter's sense of self-importance deflated by faulty reasoning. It is a cliche, but the story, which takes place in an English farm town between the two world wars, definitely keeps you guessing until the end, when the mystery is masterfully resolved and all the loose ends tied up.
To be honest, I had a rough go at reading some of the bell pealing instructions, which are peppered throughout the novel, although it opened my mind to a musical genre of whose technical difficulties I was unaware.
Book Review: A classic period piece, and a spiritual meditation
Summary: 5 Stars
When I first read this book, I was in high school. Having encountered the phenomenon of change ringing in Groves Dictionary of Music and read that "The Nine Tailors" was a novel which involved it, I assumed at first that something so old and specialized would be long out of print and unavailable. Imagine my delight when I found that the local college library had it! Presumably unable to borrow it, I felt very daring smuggling it into the 24-hour reading room and leaving it on a coat rack so that I could read it even when the library was closed. It was exciting again to discover later that it was actually in print and I could buy it for myself. This I have had to do several times over the years, because my copies keep disappearing-- probably loaned to friends.The continued availability of a novel on such an esoteric subject can only be testimony to the "the worth of the work" (one of Sayers's telling phrases in another of her books). It is, indeed, not as readily available as some of her other Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. I have read most of them, believe that this is the best, and wouldn't be surprised if the author agreed. Yet many times I have noticed bookstores having several of the others in stock, but not The Nine Tailors. This has to be a sad commentary on the reluctance of many readers, even of mysteries, to venture into a quaint, abstruse subculture foreign to their own environments. Yet, happily, the real connoisseurs of the genre, who knowingly demand it even on special order, are numerous enough to keep it in print.
This is the kind of book to take up cozily by the fire, or while snuggled unter the quilts, in wintertime as the snow falls and the wind whistles outside; for such is the weather on a bleak New Year's Eve in its first scenes. The circumstances are important-- so intricately crafted is the novel that almost everything is important. Lord Peter and his valet, driving through the fens between the world wars, meet with an automobile mishap compelling them to venture forth on foot. Soon they encounter the vicar and other salt-of-the-earth folk in the nearest village, and circumstances draw them quickly into the life of this close-knit community of good, solid, honest people unanimous in the love of the mighty, exquisite old church which is their heritage from a long-dissolved medieval monastery.
Places like this really used to exist frequently in rural England. To read of them now, when they are so rare, is to meditate on what we have lost as time marches on. Although I doubt that Sayers was writing in this mode, the nostalgia which the book provokes in a reader today can be very poignant. But, beyond nostalgia, we can imbibe a gentle, abiding "wonder and delight" in these humble villagers' experience of their faith, and what it has wrought among them, which badly needs to be recovered in much of Christendom today. Fictional entertainment though it may be, if this book inspires and helps readers more than half a century later to recover this in their own lives, we can be certain that the author would be highly gratified. I would venture to guess, in fact, that this was her larger purpose, devout Anglo-Catholic that she was, in writing it.