My Sayers re-read has stalled out after the next two in the series, Strong Poison and The Five Red Herrings. I’ve logged Strong Poison fairly recently, so I’ll just say that in spite of its flaws, I will forever adore it for the seance bits, the lock-picking bits, and for not marrying off Peter and Harriet at the end, because what a disaster that would have been.
The Five Red Herrings, however, I just do not care about. Harriet is not to be seen or even heard of; instead we get a (nearly) emotion-free venture for Peter into a positive orgy of timetables, and I just don’t care. Timetable mysteries aren’t my favorite anyway, but this is such whiplash after Strong Poison, and such a step back in terms of Peter’s development as a character, that I can not think well of it.
Also, there is an egregious trick early in the book, where Peter tells the police a critical deduction, and instead of the conversation, the reader is given an otherwise-blank page with a note at the top: ” . . . as the intelligent reader will readily supply these details for himself, they are omitted from this page.”
I have never thrown a book at the wall. I do not expect to ever throw a book at the wall. But sometimes I read a line and my hands twitch convulsively, without conscious direction, as though they’d really like to get this book away from them. (If I were Vlad Taltos, this would be when Loiosh says, “Can I eat him, boss?”) The Five Red Herrings came very close to leaping away from me when I read that line.
Have His Carcase is next, which is why I’m stalled on the re-read; yes, it has Harriet, but I recall it as being extremely long, dreary, and contrived. Maybe I’m wrong; Truepenny had a lot to say about it in her series of Sayers posts (warning: huge spoilers in all of those posts). But it’s hard to work up the enthusiasm for it.
I didn’t deal well with Five Red Herrings either. I’ve tried it only the once–maybe I should have another go. I did like Have His Carcase well enough to reread once (rare for me), partly because we get to see Harriet on her own. I wanted to nudge its pace along, but it made me appreciate Gaudy Night properly, I think.
gthistle: You might try reading Truepenny’s post on the book and seeing if any of it rings bells for you. It’s possible it works better when read out of sequence. I’m sure I’ll get to to _Have His Carcase_ eventually, because I do greatly look forward to _Murder Must Advertise_ and _The Nine Tailors_ and I’d feel guilty reading them out of sequence.
I have a problem. I created my friends layout ( http://www.honeydew780.blogspot.com ) but i don’t know how to get the posts in there! I’ve tried everything, and i’ve read what you’ve posted on the blogger faq thing, and it said to use previous templates for keys on bloggin imput. It doesn’t work!!! Help! P.S. Sorry for the run-on sentances / fragments! David
Skip _Have His Carcass_ and go straight to _Gaudy Night_
Brad, I’d like to, but I’d set the goal of re-reading the entire canon in order. There’s probably interesting stuff to be found in _HHC_, and I’ll never uncover it without the carrot of _Gaudy Night_ and the other later novels to get me there.