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16 Nov 2001
The Nine Tailors
Dorothy L. Sayers

I have not previously been too interested in mystery novels, but Jacques Barzun in his Dawn to Decadence recommended Dorothy Sayers for entertainment. This was a good thing, since this mystery is very interesting. The nine tailors are bells, and the story is intimately connected with the practice of changeringing. Campanology, or the science of bellringing and founding, apparently has a large literature, and the ringing is based on repeated patterns of different bells. There is a code worked out on the patterns in the book, hidden emeralds, and many misdirections. The protagonist is the Lord Peter Wimsey, and the setting is Great Britain, actually East Anglia, between the wars. ( )

Nine Tailors moves at a deliberate pace, and, like most good mysteries, is more notable for incidentals than for puzzle-box logic. A fine book, but it never became a page-turner (in the positive sense). ( )

I love it when a novelist goes to the trouble of researching the setting of her novel. Here Sayers has given us a superb bit of detective fiction built on the science of changeringing. ( )

Supposedly the best of all the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries but only confused me because there were so many characters and so little action. And a somewhat disappointing conclusion. ( )