Five Red Herrings (1931)

When Campbell’s body is found lifeless in the burn by Minnoch River, the police have no reason to suspect that his death was aught but an accident. It would be very easy for a man painting so near the cliff (as he was) to take a few steps back to admire the view and accidentally tumble over the edge. So far, so simple. That is until Lord Peter Wimsey arrives on the scene.

Wimsey is something of a detective – purely amateur, rest assured – and while nosing around in the dead man’s satchel, he notices something peculiar. Or rather, he notices that something is peculiarly missing. He sets the officers to look for it, but they return empty-handed. Wimsey is sure that it is in the possession of the murderer. Yes. The missing item means that Campbell has been murdered.

As far as Lord Wimsey and Inspector Macpherson (the official detective assigned to the case) know, there are six people who might have wished Campbell dead. Here is how they stand.

Matthew Gowan whom Campbell has publicly insulted and who refused to speak with Campbell before he died, Henry Strachan who is known to object so strongly to Campbell’s character that he turned Campbell off of the golf course, Michael Waters who quarreled savagely with Campbell the previous night and threatened to break his neck, Hugh Farren who believed that Campbell was taking an illicit advantage of his wife’s loving nature and kind hospitality, John Ferguson who was Campbell’s neighbor and whose garden wall Campbell had destroyed, and Jock Graham who purposely fishes just under the wall of Campbell’s house to annoy him and who once ducked Campbell into the Fleet after being insulted by him.

There are tenable explanations for how each may have killed Campbell. But which is it? And how will Lord Wimsey ever unravel the complicated web of clues?

Discussion.

Five Red Herrings was very clever – ingenuous you might say. It has billions of clues, billions of theories to interpret the clues, and six suspects who all have plausible reasons and opportunities to have murdered the victim.

When I was little I would get all involved in mysteries, trying to guess who did it, adjusting my theories along with the detective’s to fit the facts. As of late, when reading mysteries, I haven’t even bothered trying to figure out who the criminal was, I just enjoy the intellectual maneuvers of the detective. However, for this book, I felt that I ought to pick a suspect. So I did – quite randomly. And the hilarious thing is that I randomly and for no reason in particular picked the right one. ;)

There is no doubt that Dorothy Sayers is the most scholarly murder mystery writer that I have ever read. That said, I must admit that I don’t really like my murder mysteries to be scholarly. Mind you, I DEMAND that they be intelligent and demand intelligence on the part of the reader, but I don’t enjoy them very much when they drone on for pages and pages about painting equipment and time-tables. Five Red Herrings was intricate – very intricate, and while I appreciated that, it sometimes seemed as though nothing was actually happening. Perhaps this was just a bit of realism; whatever it was, it wasn’t my favorite. I like my mysteries to be mostly cliché and stereotype with just a little variation.

Conclusion. While Five Red Herrings was clever, funny, and intricate, it wasn’t my favorite. I acknowledge that this may have been due only to my taste, and reading preferences.

Visit Laura's Bookshelf to read more reviews!

http://www.lauraverret.com/blog/category/adult-fiction/ ( )

Some bits of this were funny and just perfectly Peter Wimsey-ical. But a lot of it was routine painstaking working out of timetables and alibis and who was lying when and about what. It doesn't help that one rather feels that the murdered man deserved it, and the suspects don't. Or that the dialogue is mostly written with a stab at phonetically spelling out the Scottish accent/dialect. It's hard to read, and it isn't terribly rewarding, allow the last fifty pages or so is wonderful.

There isn't enough of any of the characters one cares about, and actually, if I were rereading the series some time in a couple of years, my advice to myself would be to skip this one, or just read the last fifty pages.

The part where it doesn't tell you what Wimsey found, or rather, didn't find, is infuriating. If you're an artist who works with paints, you'll know. If you don't, you'll go most of the book without knowing. Infuriating! ( )

In my review of this the first time, I wrote: "If I were rereading the series some time in a couple of years, my advice to myself would be to skip this one, or just read the last fifty pages."

I haven't listened to my own advice, plainly. I've listened to the whole radioplay and reread the whole novel -- in quite close succession, even. And it doesn't really improve. The last fifty pages are still the best part, and though the plot is cleverly constructed, it's so labyrinthine as to be utterly infuriating. And there isn't enough of Parker or Bunter.

Worth reading, because the mystery is good, but only once. ( )

I cannot put enough emphasis on my recommendation NOT TO READ THIS BOOK. All the dialogue is written 'phonetically' to help you get a real sense of the Scots accent and the plot revolves around British country train timetables! Two boring things that are very boring together. Actually, Wodehouse and Christie can make an amusing thing out of a train timetable but Sayers, not so much.

Here's a jolly example of the accentising:

The mon was deid before he got intae the burn. 'Twas the scart on the heid that did it.

Two hundred and eighty-four pages of it. ( )

There were plenty of things about this book that I loved: Lord Peter lapsing into blank verse, the accents of the various characters as re-created by the audiobook narrator, the setting, the re-enactment of the crime. However, I was frequently lost in the timetable discussions and I found it very difficult to keep the names and the characteristics (not to mention the alibis!) of the various suspects in my head. As it was an audiobook, there was no easy flipping back a few pages to work things out. Suffice to say, this is not my favourite Sayers. But even Sayers at less than her most brilliant is a lot better than countless others! ( )