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How the Sayers is going
It's very mixed!
I finished Have His Carcase and was entertained, though I generally found the mystery plot overly convoluted and hard to believe in. I particularly didn't believe that the police would be working that hard to solve a crime that everyone thinks is obviously a suicide for nearly the entire book.
Murder Must Advertise, on the other hand, I loved wholeheartedly from start to finish. The advertising stuff is dead on, the murder/mystery plot really makes sense and feels believable as a thing people *would* actually do, I loved all the side characters and how all of them kinda had their own thing going on, parts of it are just spectacularly funny, and undercover!Peter is completely adorable and I love him. ♥
A brief but highly spoilery comment on the murder mystery: This book does a reverse red herring, and it was really effective! Tallboy is so obviously Up To Something with the envelope full of cash and various other weird behavior that you think, no, there has got to be some ordinary explanation for it - but no, he really did do it, he's just exactly as clumsy at hiding that he's up to something as any regular person WOULD be! It was really effective and I think that's part of what made the book feel so grounded and real, and also the side characters (Miss Meteyard! ♥) and all the minutiae of their everyday lives was fantastic.
So basically I really loved that one and I was like "okay, FINE, I see why you all like Wimsey now, because he's a total darling and I want to pet him." And then I decided to read Strong Poison to see Harriet's introduction, and as of about the 25% mark in this book, I have figured out that what I'm bouncing off, specifically, is Peter with Harriet. (The two previous books that I disliked, btw, were Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon, which I think I bounced off so hard I didn't finish it. In retrospect Gaudy Night was probably a terrible one to start with - I read that one as my introduction to Sayers about 15 years ago because I had osmosed that it's everyone's favorite, but I think you do probably need the character background to appreciate it, and I'm tempted to try again if I end up liking this one well enough.)
But the difference in my reactions to Peter alone and Peter with Harriet is really interesting!
And I was really eager for this book! After Murder Must Advertise I was feeling really great about Peter (I really can see what people see in him now), and I was looking forward to seeing Harriet's introduction, and then I found out the setup (which is absolutely the 1920s version of "what if someone saw my Google search history and thought I was planning Actual Murders"; I love it) and was really excited about watching Peter be ~the only person who believes in her innocence~ and accidentally falling for her while trying to solve the case behind the police's backs.
Things I did not want:
- Peter walking in and announcing that he loves her and is going to marry her when we're only 20% of the way into the book and HE LITERALLY HASN'T TALKED TO HER YET. This is the opposite of what I want!! She just had a terrible love affair break up and she literally has no idea who you are, you're being a total creep and I hate it. ;__;
- The police just being like "Okay, sure, it's an open and shut case but we'll totally go investigate some more!" I mean, we've got a perfect setup here for Peter Going Rogue, and what is even the point of a scenario like this if he's just going to convince them to investigate with him anyway! What I liked about MMA was that the parts of it that the police were investigating (the drug ring) and the parts they were ignoring actually were plausible, as opposed to Carcase where it also didn't make any sense!
I'm going to go ahead and finish reading it because I'm really curious about the murder and I do also like Peter most of the time, but I'm also absolutely fascinated at how much I love him when he's sleuthing by himself and/or interacting with his family, and how much I don't when he's in the same room with Harriet, which I sort of gather is the opposite of how most people feel?
I know a lot of people love these, and I do actually feel kind of bad about not liking them more! I absolutely loved everything about MMA, though, Peter very much included.
I finished Have His Carcase and was entertained, though I generally found the mystery plot overly convoluted and hard to believe in. I particularly didn't believe that the police would be working that hard to solve a crime that everyone thinks is obviously a suicide for nearly the entire book.
Murder Must Advertise, on the other hand, I loved wholeheartedly from start to finish. The advertising stuff is dead on, the murder/mystery plot really makes sense and feels believable as a thing people *would* actually do, I loved all the side characters and how all of them kinda had their own thing going on, parts of it are just spectacularly funny, and undercover!Peter is completely adorable and I love him. ♥
A brief but highly spoilery comment on the murder mystery: This book does a reverse red herring, and it was really effective! Tallboy is so obviously Up To Something with the envelope full of cash and various other weird behavior that you think, no, there has got to be some ordinary explanation for it - but no, he really did do it, he's just exactly as clumsy at hiding that he's up to something as any regular person WOULD be! It was really effective and I think that's part of what made the book feel so grounded and real, and also the side characters (Miss Meteyard! ♥) and all the minutiae of their everyday lives was fantastic.
So basically I really loved that one and I was like "okay, FINE, I see why you all like Wimsey now, because he's a total darling and I want to pet him." And then I decided to read Strong Poison to see Harriet's introduction, and as of about the 25% mark in this book, I have figured out that what I'm bouncing off, specifically, is Peter with Harriet. (The two previous books that I disliked, btw, were Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon, which I think I bounced off so hard I didn't finish it. In retrospect Gaudy Night was probably a terrible one to start with - I read that one as my introduction to Sayers about 15 years ago because I had osmosed that it's everyone's favorite, but I think you do probably need the character background to appreciate it, and I'm tempted to try again if I end up liking this one well enough.)
But the difference in my reactions to Peter alone and Peter with Harriet is really interesting!
And I was really eager for this book! After Murder Must Advertise I was feeling really great about Peter (I really can see what people see in him now), and I was looking forward to seeing Harriet's introduction, and then I found out the setup (which is absolutely the 1920s version of "what if someone saw my Google search history and thought I was planning Actual Murders"; I love it) and was really excited about watching Peter be ~the only person who believes in her innocence~ and accidentally falling for her while trying to solve the case behind the police's backs.
Things I did not want:
- Peter walking in and announcing that he loves her and is going to marry her when we're only 20% of the way into the book and HE LITERALLY HASN'T TALKED TO HER YET. This is the opposite of what I want!! She just had a terrible love affair break up and she literally has no idea who you are, you're being a total creep and I hate it. ;__;
- The police just being like "Okay, sure, it's an open and shut case but we'll totally go investigate some more!" I mean, we've got a perfect setup here for Peter Going Rogue, and what is even the point of a scenario like this if he's just going to convince them to investigate with him anyway! What I liked about MMA was that the parts of it that the police were investigating (the drug ring) and the parts they were ignoring actually were plausible, as opposed to Carcase where it also didn't make any sense!
I'm going to go ahead and finish reading it because I'm really curious about the murder and I do also like Peter most of the time, but I'm also absolutely fascinated at how much I love him when he's sleuthing by himself and/or interacting with his family, and how much I don't when he's in the same room with Harriet, which I sort of gather is the opposite of how most people feel?
I know a lot of people love these, and I do actually feel kind of bad about not liking them more! I absolutely loved everything about MMA, though, Peter very much included.
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I read the Harriet books at an impressionable age and so the romance was very iddy for me, but I completely get why someone would bounce off it.
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(Edit: Oh no wait, Whose Body IS one of the ones I have lined up! Okay, I'll read that one next, then. :D)
Re: the romance, it's really just personal preference, and I mean, I can very easily see why someone would click with it. And I mean, I completely came to love Wimsey in MMA, so perhaps I'll like the romance better, too, as I proceed!
.... somewhat randomly, it was actually reading these books (though I forget if it was technically in Sayers or Allingham, as I've been switching between them) that finally made me tumble to one piece of slang in the Biggles books that I had never actually realized the meaning of: ack emma (a.m.). For some reason it had never turned up in a context where the meaning was evident to me in those books, but they also use it in these and I guess I finally ran across it enough times to figure out what it means. XD
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My absolutely favourite bit of UK period slang came from one of Gladys Mitchell's Mrs Bradley mysteries, set in a boys' boarding-school: "to cat" meaning to "vomit". As in "Sir, Sir, Atkinson Minor just catted on the rug!"
Anyone acquainted with the species in question knows how true to life the term is...
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*quietly makes a mental note*
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Strong poison
Re: Strong poison
Re: Strong poison
Re: Strong poison
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You can like Peter without Harriet! It's fine! Really enjoying your reviews.
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(I am also simultaneously reading Saint-Exupery's Airman's Odyssey, a memoir written in the 1930s and 1940s, which might be relevant to your interests given that it's all about aviator life of that era. It's gorgeously written and also very harrowing. Intellectually I know he survives every disaster--well, every disaster but the one that actually killed him, which obviously isn't covered in his memoir--but emotionally I am full of fear every time his plane engine hiccoughs.)
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I feel it's a bit OOC for Peter to have been all "I want to marry her" all at once before they met...but then we don't really see him with anyone serious before that point. I love the way the romance develops, but the origin is creepy if you're Harriet, and also if you're Peter.
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I enjoyed the murder, and adored getting to see the 'Cattery' sleuths at work in their different ways (Mrs Climpson has hidden depths!), and Cremorna Garden's torrid backstory.
I remain very curious as to what inspired Peter's certainty that Harriet is The One before even speaking to her.
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You might be better with Nine Tailors, Bellona Club, etc the ones without Harriet.
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The only one I've read to date with Harriet in it is Strong Poison, but I've got Have His Carcase up next...
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Anyway, if you're looking for more Lord Peter Wimsey books that don't feature his relationship with Harriet, you'll be glad to know that you've now read all the ones that she shows up in! (Give or take a throwaway sentence about Peter going off to dine with a certain lady, or something.)
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I echo those who suggest Whose Body and Clouds of Witness next. Bellona Club was perfectly serviceable, as is Five Red Herrings. I’m not a huge fan of Nine Tailors but again, perfectly serviceable, and I think it also shows growth as a writer on Sayers’ part.
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And I have so many other things to read. But I do want to reread someday. I loved the books with Peter and Harriet in particular, though as you've seen, parts are objectionable.
I'm glad you're overall enjoying them!
Sayers