Month: April 2004

I’m almost pleased that I didn’t like Dorothy Sayers’ The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club much better on this re-read; I was starting to be afraid that I’d gone all uncritically fangirlish or something. It’s a clever mystery, and does some very nice riffs on veterans and wars, and continues to move Peter’s character forward as a character, and is generally pretty good. But I simply cannot believe that part of the ending is happy, and the narrative fairly clearly wants me to. [*] For some reason, I’m not willing to forgive this the way I’ve forgiven the plot holes and unpleasant social bits of prior books.

[*] It’s only one sentence, so I’ll rot-13 the spoiler: v fgebatyl qvfyvxr eboreg sragvzna naq pnaabg pbaprvir bs naa qbeynaq orvat unccl jvgu uvz.

Random other comments:

• I read by recognizing word shapes and beginnings/endings, not phonetics, especially with names. As a result, I always think of this book as taking place at the Belladonna Club.
• One of the wills in this book is a really excellent example of a reasonable-seeming will with hidden defects. Consider every contingency when drafting your will, no matter how remote: every permutation of gains and losses of property, of births and deaths, marriages and divorces.
• Before this re-read, I hadn’t disliked any recurring character but the Duchess of Denver. I didn’t want to agree with some disparaging remarks about Parker that I’ve seen here and there, but his limitations are more apparent to me now, alas.
• I think I read this wildly out of order the first time, because somehow I hadn’t noticed that Ann Dorland is kind of a trial run for Harriet Vane. And Peter’s patronizing to her, too.
• I think Peter must have had a shell-shock attack after the end of the case, because of the line “He sent you all sorts of messages, by the way,” in the epilogue; at least, it seems the best explanation of why Peter would have been unavailable.

Obviously, I was mistaken when I thought that a short story collection came before this one; short stories next, and then Strong Poison—Harriet at last, and more Miss Climpson!

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Another Sayers novel, namely Unnatural Death, and another pleasant re-discovery. I mean, it has a happy, lifelong lesbian relationship with admirable and admired partners (broken only by one partner’s death in 1922, before the book opens), legal neepery—neither of which I remembered—and Miss Climpson! What more could I ask for?

(Okay, I could ask for correct legal neepery. Apparently Sayers made a considerable error, though just enough is accurate to suffice for plot purposes. But never mind that.)

Agatha Dawson is the surviving partner of the relationship I mentioned above; when she dies, her doctor is baffled, as there doesn’t appear to be any immediate reason for the death (despite her suffering from cancer). Peter gets on the case by accident, partly because he has a meddling nature [*] and partly because he thinks he may have found a successful murder—no obvious means, no obvious motive, quietly going along under the radar, and who’s to say how many of the type there might be? (I couldn’t, myself, but I bet there are lots with this method.)

[*] Which, to be fair, troubles his conscience here and throughout the series. As a priest says to himself after encountering Peter, “‘Dear, dear, how nice they are. So kindly and scrupulous and so vague outside their public-school code. And much more nervous and sensitive than people think. A very difficult class to reach. I must make a special intention for him at Mass tomorrow.’ Being a practical man, Mr. Tredgold made a knot in his handkerchief to remind himself of this pious resolve.”

Probably non-lawyers roll their eyes and skim through the legal neepery in this book, but it amused me—”hey, I know what this is about!” And I certainly don’t want to meet Miss Climpson in person, but I really enjoy reading about her (even if Sayers ends up forgetting the existence of one (1) of her messages, this book). It’s a pretty good mystery, I think, but really, the main thing that pleases me so much is the positive portrayal of Agatha Dawson and Clara Whittaker’s relationship. (Note, however, that it does contrast oddly with the casual generalized racism of some of the characters, which itself contrasts oddly with the entirely sympathetic portrayal of the only Black character. If you don’t mind book-destroying spoilers, Jo Walton has interesting comments on British racism in the comments to this LiveJournal post.)

I think I’m going to re-read the short stories too, so a collection of those will be next up.

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