{"id":456,"date":"2006-10-02T21:05:39","date_gmt":"2006-10-02T21:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=456"},"modified":"2024-03-24T11:19:38","modified_gmt":"2024-03-24T15:19:38","slug":"sayers_hangmans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2006\/10\/sayers_hangmans\/","title":{"rendered":"Sayers, Dorothy L.: (09) <cite>Hangman&#8217;s Holiday<\/cite>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the next Dorothy Sayers collection in my re-read, <strong><cite>Hangman&#8217;s Holiday<\/cite><\/strong>, I actually read the original collection rather than the stories reprinted in <cite>Lord Peter<\/cite> (the library had a copy). I am not impressed by any of the four Wimsey stories in this collection, namely &#8220;The Image in the Mirror,&#8221; &#8220;The Incredible Elopement of Lord Peter Wimsey,&#8221; &#8220;The Queen&#8217;s Square,&#8221; and &#8220;The Necklace of Pearls.&#8221; I found the first predictable, the second condescending, the third uninteresting, and the fourth&mdash;well, my reaction to the fourth isn&#8217;t actually the story&#8217;s fault, I just lacked a particular piece of knowledge that would have made the story an &#8220;ah-hah!&#8221; rather than a &#8220;huh.&#8221; (ROT-13 spoiler: V unq gur inthr vqrn gung zvfgyrgbr oreevrf jrer erq, abg juvgr.)<\/p>\n<p>This collection also has several stories featuring Montague Egg, travelling salesman of wine and spirits. I find, on a re-read, that I don&#8217;t like Montague Egg. This may not be his fault. His name conjures up a bald smarmy man in my mind&#8217;s eye, and though he is actually young and fair-haired, some of that smarmy image carries over to my reading of his dialogue, fairly or unfairly.<\/p>\n<p>There are two other stories in the collection, &#8220;The Man Who Knew How&#8221; and &#8220;The Fountain Plays,&#8221; both of which are kind of unpleasant.<\/p>\n<p>What it comes down to is, I don&#8217;t principally read Sayers for the puzzles, so I&#8217;m just not going to like her short stories very much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the next Dorothy Sayers collection in my re-read, Hangman&#8217;s Holiday, I actually read the original collection rather than the stories reprinted in Lord Peter (the library had a copy). I am not impressed by any of the four Wimsey stories in this collection, namely &#8220;The Image in the Mirror,&#8221; &#8220;The Incredible Elopement of Lord &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2006\/10\/sayers_hangmans\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Sayers, Dorothy L.: (09) <cite>Hangman&#8217;s Holiday<\/cite>&#8220;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,117,34],"tags":[372],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mystery","category-short-fiction","category-wimseyvane","tag-sayers-dorothy-l"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2868,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions\/2868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}