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The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers
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The Nine Tailors (edition 1966)

by Dorothy L. Sayers

Series: Lord Peter Wimsey (11)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
4,3791162,647 (4.05)2 / 488
Fiction. Mystery. HTML:

While ringing in the New Year, Lord Peter Wimsey discovers some old crimes: "A rattling good mystery" (Kirkus Reviews).
Lord Peter Wimsey and his manservant Bunter are halfway across the wild flatlands of East Anglia when they make a wrong turn, straight into a ditch. They scramble over the rough country to the nearest church, where they find hospitality, dinner, and an invitation to go bell-ringing. This ancient art is steeped in mathematical complexities, and tonight the rector and his friends plan to embark on a 9-hour marathon session to welcome the New Year. Lord Peter joins them, taking a step into a society whose cheerful exterior hides a dark, deadly past.

During their stay in this unfamiliar countryside, Lord Peter and Bunter encounter murder, a mutilated corpse, and a decades-old jewel theft for which locals continue to die. In this land where bells toll for the dead, the ancient chimes never seem to stop.

The Nine Tailors is the 11th book in the Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries, but you may enjoy the series by reading the books in any order.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Dorothy L. Sayers including rare images from the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College.

.… (more)
▾Book information
Member:vjrd
Title:The Nine Tailors
Authors:Dorothy L. Sayers
Info:Harvest Books (1966), Paperback, 420 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:
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The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers

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Showing 1-5 of 114 (next | show all)
I'm accepting it - I'm not a Sayers fan. ( )
  mmcrawford | Dec 5, 2023 |
I mean, fine mystery with some clever identity play and misleading stuff. How much you enjoy it will depend on how much you enjoy Sayers' style. And bell ringing talk.

I have to say something about the ending In the end, the murder is revealed to be a complete accident, although it's maybe not surprising that leaving a guy in a room of 8 big bells is not exactly conducive to his health. The victim was a murderer and thief who ruined the lives of multiple people - and weirdly didn't even see any profit from it. And before his identity was discovered everyone thought he was dead anyway. So the discovery of the body and Wimsey's identification of him just made everything worse, a fact he muses on a bit. The person with the most responsibility for the death didn't intend to kill him - he was married to the man's wife and had realised that if he was still alive then their marriage was bigamous, and was going to give him money to leave the country to avoid a scandal for the wife. He got struck down by flu before he could carry out his plan and left him in the belfry, which killed him.

And then at the end of the book, when there's no sign there's going to be any charges pressed against him or anything, he dies. He's working on a sluice gate, it bursts with plenty of warning so I don't know why they didn't get off, someone falls in the river, he jumps in after them, both die.

The death feels entirely futile, both from a moral and narrative standpoint. He's left behind a wife and kids, the wife widowed for the 2nd time. He was a labourer and presumably barely left any money for them. He could have left the sluice before it burst. But none of this is gone into. He just dies. It's a bizarrely miserable end where it feels like Wimsey's exertions did nothing but ruin the lives of a working class family. But hey, the daughter of the county squire got extremely rich so everything's fine! Bizarre.

Also the cipher here is pretty ingenious but it's both cracked way too easily and also gone into more detail than most people would be interested in. Have His Carcase had the same problem. ( )
  tombomp | Oct 31, 2023 |
When a disfigured corpse is discovered in a country parish, the local rector pleads with Lord Peter to take on what will become one of his most brilliant and complicated cases.

Wimsey gets stuck in a small village over New Year when his car breaks down, and becomes involved in bell ringing the New Year in. Whilst he's waiting for his car to be fixed, he hears the story of some emeralds being stolen and the devastating effect it has had on some of the local families.

Months later, an extra body is unexpectedly found in a grave, face bashed in, hands cut off and a cause of death undetermined, Wimsey is called back to help find out what happened.

What happens next is a story of imposters, double crosses, bigamy, murder, theft, ciphers and bell ringing. Sometimes the information presented is a little too much, which did make my eyes glaze over occasionally, and is perhaps why it took me so long to finish - I should have been able to finish this much faster than I did. Not my favourite of the Wimsey stories, and this would not stand up (on it's own) against an agatha Christie ( )
  nordie | Oct 14, 2023 |
I'd heard the phrase "ringing the changes" my whole life but never knew what it meant. The descriptions of the English style of bell ringing in this book are detailed and obsessive; long story short, the tuneless cacophony you hear after weddings in English movies is a deliberate effect that people are working very hard to achieve. So, worth the admission for unlocking a new genre of YouTube videos to watch when you don't have or feel prone to a headache. The mystery is convoluted, and if you sometimes have a hard time remembering who is who in a multi-character mystery, take notes. But the characters are delightful and the language is thrilling, with beautiful descriptions of land and people; no doubt there is also an underlying structure to the book related to bell-ringing. You can sense this is a bit of a time-killer before Harriet Vane comes back on the scene, but it's not wasted time. ( )
  emilymcmc | Jun 24, 2023 |
This book finds Lord Peter Wimsey in a small country town struggling to solve a crime. It actually shows more of the ponderous work needed by detectives than other Peter Wimsey books. Much of the plot involves the intricacies of bell ringing and drainage canals. Many readers are likely to grow weary of these details but I found them interesting. The book, however, would have been nicely accompanied by a soundtrack. ( )
  M_Clark | Jun 17, 2023 |
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▾Other authors

» Add other authors (13 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Dorothy L. Sayers—primary authorall editionscalculated
Bayer, OttoTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bergvall, SonjaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Carmichael, IanNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Damkoehler, KatrinaCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Eräpuro, AnnikaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Francavilla, A. M.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
George, ElizabethIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Homeyer, HeleneTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Larsstuvold, RuneTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Ledwidge, NatachaIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Næsted, HenningTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Nielsen, HenningCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Paton Walsh, JillIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
▾Series and work relationships
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▾Common Knowledge
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Canonical title
The Nine Tailors
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
1934-01
People/Characters
Peter Death Bredon Wimsey (Lord Peter Wimsey)
Mervyn Bunter
Jack Godfrey
Harry Gotobed
Hezekiah Lavender
Important places
Fenchurch St. Paul, England, UK
East Anglia, England, UK
Important events
Related movies
The Nine Tailors (1974 | IMDb)
Epigraph
704
By the Course Ends 64352
8th the Observation
Call her in the middle with a double, before, wrong and home. Repeated once.
Changes Rung
On an Old Theme
In Two Short Touches
And Two Full Peals
Dedication
First words
"That's torn it!" said Lord Peter Wimsey.
[Foreword] From time to time complaints are made about the ringing of church bells.
Quotations
Five minutes' practice before the glass every day, and you will soon acquire that vacant look so desirable for all rogues, detectives and Government officials.
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Lewis, Sinclair
Morley, Christopher
James, P.D.
Walters, Minette
Rendell, Ruth
Original language
English UK
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC
▾References

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (1)

▾Book descriptions
Fiction. Mystery. HTML:

While ringing in the New Year, Lord Peter Wimsey discovers some old crimes: "A rattling good mystery" (Kirkus Reviews).
Lord Peter Wimsey and his manservant Bunter are halfway across the wild flatlands of East Anglia when they make a wrong turn, straight into a ditch. They scramble over the rough country to the nearest church, where they find hospitality, dinner, and an invitation to go bell-ringing. This ancient art is steeped in mathematical complexities, and tonight the rector and his friends plan to embark on a 9-hour marathon session to welcome the New Year. Lord Peter joins them, taking a step into a society whose cheerful exterior hides a dark, deadly past.

During their stay in this unfamiliar countryside, Lord Peter and Bunter encounter murder, a mutilated corpse, and a decades-old jewel theft for which locals continue to die. In this land where bells toll for the dead, the ancient chimes never seem to stop.

The Nine Tailors is the 11th book in the Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries, but you may enjoy the series by reading the books in any order.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Dorothy L. Sayers including rare images from the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College.

.
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Book description
When his sexton finds a corpse in the wrong grave, the rector of Fenchurch St Paul asks Lord Peter Wimsey to find out who the dead man was and how he cane to be there.
The lore of bell-ringing and a brilliantly-evoked village in the remote fens of East Anglia are the unforgettable background to a story of an old unsolved crime and its violent unravelling twenty years later.
Haiku summary
The church bells have more

character than the ones

who stay to ring them.

(legallypuzzled)

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WorldCat

Genres

Melvil Decimal System (DDC)

823.912Literature › English & Old English literatures › English fiction › Modern Period › 1901-1999 › 1901-1945

LC Classification

PR6037.A95Language and Literature › English › English Literature › 1900-1960

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