Have His Carcase

(37) I loved the way this one started with Harriet Vane finding the body atop a big rock on a stretch of lonely beach while on a 'walking tour' vacation. (I guess this was a thing.) Not able to move the body to prevent the tide from coming in and washing it away - she sleuths around taking pictures of the slit throat, and the razor blade found in the water, and walks on to report it to the police in the next little town she comes to. Before long the police and Lord Peter are involved and the dead man is identified as a 'gigolo' at a seaside hotel, who dances with rich old ladies. And apparently sometimes convinces them to marry. The mystery gets incredibly convoluted and as the body has been washed away - its hard to prove murder or show more suicide.

I do like the interplay between Harriet and Peter and enjoyed all the hashing out of the details of the alibis. Who was telling the truth? The pages devoted to guessing the cipher were a bit much, though I did like the Romanov family tree twist. All in all it was definitely a good installment. Probably my biggest complaint is that they finally cooked up a story that made sense and then the novel just ... ended. Harriet and Peter literally say - lets go have lunch in Piccadilly square and leave this little town. I think a bit of a description of the aftermath and corroborating the theory was in order. show less

Where I got the book: my bookshelf. Continuing my re-read of the Wimsey books.

The plot: novelist Harriet Vane takes a walking vacation along the south coast of England to work on the plot of her latest murder mystery, but finds the body of a young man instead. Her suitor Lord Peter Wimsey is quickly on the scene, but the investigators are puzzled. All the signs seem to point to a particular perpetrator, but his alibi for the time of death is rock solid. Something is wrong with the picture--but what?

Having waded through Five Red Herrings, I now feel like I'm on the downhill slope of this reading marathon. And what delights are before me--Have His Carcase, Murder Must Advertise, The Nine Tailors and Gaudy Night are, imho, the Golden Age show more of the Wimsey books.

Sayers simply seems to hit her stride with Have His Carcase and the energy doesn't quit till Busman's Honeymoon, where Wimsey and Vane simply become too quotation-ridden to be believable. One of the beauties of Have His Carcase is the introduction of the inside of Harriet Vane's head, which is a delightfully down-to-earth counterpart to Wimsey's flights of fancy. She is practical, forthright and yet never overly wonderful--her insecurities and mistakes are laid bare for all to see, and she's definitely not always reasonable where Wimsey is concerned. The introduction of a fully-rounded character into the Wimsey books forces Sayers to make Wimsey himself more vulnerable, even as the list of his accomplishments stretches toward the exaggerated.

The only place where my attention flags a bit in this book is the long explanation of the code-cracking, although it is very clever and no doubt puzzle buffs must thoroughly enjoy it. I noticed, for the first time, that my 1977 edition was typeset the old-fashioned way, making the code grids rather wobbly. I'm so glad I kept it, because it reminds me of how books used to be before all this newfangled computer stuff came in. I would truly like to own the yellow-jacketed Gollancz hardbacks (the form in which I discovered the series, in my school library) but I imagine they are collector's items and priced accordingly.

If I thought really hard about this novel I would probably discover its flaws; Sayers herself cheerfully admitted that she screwed up sometimes. But I was too busy reading it... show less

Have His Carcase by Dorothy Sayers is the seventh book in her Lord Peter Wimsey mystery series and I enjoyed this one a great deal. Harriet Vane moves front and center in this story as she discovers a dead body on a beach. The second he hears of this, Lord Peter is there is assist her and ferret out the truth - is this suicide or a murder?

An entertaining puzzler that moves Harriet and Lord Peter’s relationship along. He is still throwing marriage proposals at her and she is still refusing but, the reader can’t escape that sparks are flying between these two and it is pretty obvious that the lady is on the cusp of falling in love. The mystery was intricate and inventive. The banter between Lord Peter and Harriet was crisp, funny and show more irresistible. These two characters are made to be together and I look forward to reading more about them.

I have enjoyed all of the Lord Peter mysteries but I would have to say Have His Carcase is my favorite one so far. This complex mystery combined with it’s charming romance made for a delightful read. show less

Many murder mysteries have been given odds titles, but “Have His Carcase” (1932) by Dorothy L. Sayers must be one of the oddest, at least for American readers. Yet for its time and place it is actually a very good title. Under British law, the Have-His-Carcase Act, you cannot hold an inquest into a death until you have a body.

In this clever, always interesting novel, there is photographic evidence of a death, yet the body is swept out to sea by the tide, so for about half the book the sleuths, both professional and amateur, can only speculate.

Mystery writer Harriet Vane, herself a murder suspect until cleared after the intervention of Lord Peter Wimsey in a previous novel, discovers a young man with his throat cut along the coast. show more She finds fresh blood and a razor, but no footprints in the sand other than hers and the victim's. Realizing the tide is coming in, she takes a few photographs and then leaves to summon help

The body soon disappears, but Wimsey arrives, still trying to get Harriet to marry him. He believes it's a murder case, even through the local police and, eventually, the inquest say it's a suicide.

The victim had supported himself by dancing with wealthy older women at a nearby hotel. One of these women says the man had promised to marry her.

Other than the missing body, the case's other major complication is that two men, including this woman's son, had been behaving suspiciously, but both have ironclad alibis for the time of the murder. But if they didn't murder the man, who did?

When I devoured the Dorothy L. Sayers mysteries back in the late Sixties and early Seventies, I considered “Have His Carcase” my favorite. This rereading doesn't change my opinion. show less

I do enjoy these books, but the misogyny of even a feminist writer, writing almost a century ago, is hard to read.

The casual racism and anti-Semitism that shows up is also difficult and often jarring. Sayers denied the anti-Semitism, and I imagine she would say she was merely depicting the widespread racism / anti-Semitism, in her dialog and characterizations. Plausible, from my 2026-re-readings: To date, the jarring racism/anti-Semitism shows up most obviously in the casual use of racist/anti-Semitic language, and biased attitudes displayed by characters other than the protagonist(s).

But the misogyny in this book, depicting an older woman dating a young fortune-hunter, is hard to avoid, when it's placed so plainly in the views not show more just of side characters but also of our secondary protagonist, Harriet Vane.

Also, an incredibly detailed scene of Harriet & Peter working through an encryption. How on earth did Sayers write this? Did she work it through on her own and just transcribe the process, and then put in character voices? I can't imagine. show less

Harriet Vane, the famous detective novelist and infamous murder suspect (recently acquitted), is on a walking tour of British coastal villages. One afternoon she has a picnic on the beach and drops off to sleep. When she awakens, she is shocked to discover the body of a dead man farther along the beach. The man’s throat has been cut, but there is only one set of footprints (which must belong to the corpse), so suicide is a possibility. But Harriet can’t help thinking it might be murder. She photographs the body — which will be washed away when the tide comes in — and goes for help. But much to Harriet’s chagrin, help eventually arrives in the form of Lord Peter Wimsey, whose eagerness to solve the mystery is compounded by his show more desire to spend more time with Harriet. As the two join forces to solve the mystery, they also struggle to define the nature and boundaries of their relationship.

The more I read of Dorothy L. Sayers, the more I come to realize that she is emphatically NOT for everyone. This book is a Golden Age mystery, but it’s far from a typical one. Sayers is unquestionably familiar with the tropes of the genre — indeed, Peter and Harriet have some fun mocking them in this book — but she doesn’t seem particularly interested in following them herself. As with many of her other books, the “whodunit” is not the main concern; rather, she spends most of her time setting up a seemingly impossible crime, then explaining at length how it was possible after all. It’s clever, but I must confess that it didn’t hold my attention. A chapter near the end, where Peter and Harriet decode a letter and painstakingly explain how the code works, is especially dull.

However, I still really liked this book, and the reason is that I’m fascinated by the development of the relationship between Peter and Harriet. There’s one scene in particular, where they leave aside their usual polite banter and express their real emotions, that hit me right in the gut. Much as my romantic heart wants them to get together, I completely understand Harriet’s ambivalence and her struggle to maintain her independence in the face of Peter’s relentless pursuit. I’m extremely eager to read Gaudy Night now, but since I’m going in publication order, I have a couple books in between. I think that when I reread the series (as I undoubtedly will), I’ll group all the Peter-and-Harriet books together. show less

Another romp of a “Golden Age” detective story, gently poking fun at the complexity of the detective tradition with great good humour. I got lost and skipped parts of the chapter concerning the detailed solving of a cipher, but otherwise the story moved apace with wonderful period detail. I enjoyed references to (now vintage) cars, the (Lyons) Corner House at Piccadilly and the gold standard (published in 1932, the book was written before Britain came off the gold standard in 1931). But I especially enjoyed the descriptions of the hotels, guest houses, Winter Gardens and evening dancing, with professional partners.

Sayers delights in describing her detective hero, Lord Peter Wimsey, and heroine, Harriet Vane:
“Wimsey was lingering show more lovingly over his bacon and eggs, so as to leave no restless and unfilled moment in his morning. By which it may be seen that his lordship had reached that time of life when a man can draw an Epicurean enjoyment even from his own passions - the halcyon period between the self-tormenting exuberance of youth and the fretful carpe diem of approaching senility.” show less