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    Whose Body? with eBook
    Whose Body? with eBook
    Whose Body? with eBook
    Audiobook6 hours

    Whose Body? with eBook

    Written by Dorothy L. Sayers

    Narrated by Roe Kendall

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    The stark naked body was lying in the tub. Not unusual for a proper bath, but highly irregular for murder-especially with a pair of gold pince-nez deliberately perched before the sightless eyes. What's more, the face appeared to have been shaved after death. The police assumed that the victim was a prominent financier, but Lord Peter Wimsey, who dabbled in mystery detection as a hobby, knew better. In this, his first murder case, Lord Peter untangles the ghastly mystery of the corpse in the bath.

    First published in 1923, Whose Body? established the disarmingly debonair-and somewhat foppish-Wimsey as one of the most enduring characters in English literature. It remains one of the most significant (and most charming) of the Golden Age mysteries.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 9, 2009
    ISBN9781400181308
    Author

    Dorothy L. Sayers

    Dorothy L. Sayers, the greatest of the golden age detective novelists, was born in Oxford in 1893. Her aristocratic detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, became one of the most popular fictional heroes of the twentieth century. She devoted the last 20 years of her life to playwriting, Christian scholarship, and a new translation of Dante. She died in 1957.

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    Reviews for Whose Body? with eBook

    3.5/5

    1,381 ratings99 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Lord Peter Wimsey is the epitome of the elegant, eccentric sleuth, and one of the great characters of mystery fiction. In Whose Body, Dorothy L. Sayers' first book, Wimsey himself views the stark naked body lying in the tub. And of course, the brilliant detective untangles the ghastly murder in spite of incorrect assumptions by the police. Started slow but kept me guessing until the end. Good mystery with twists and turns, humor and wit. Well plotted with engaging characters. Sayers is a beautiful writer and I would recommend to those who love English mystery.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      This was a so-so murder mystery to be solved by Lord Peter Wimsey. The book was very juvenile. I found their speaking affectations contrived (reely). The ending was thrust upon the reader by means of a letter. I will not be reading any other books in this series. This was a free Kindle book and I see why!
    • 5/5
      This is my favorite of the Lord Peter Wimsey series of books.
    • 3/5
      Whose Body? is a bit confusing at first. Lord Peter Wimsey appears as silly as you can get, but in time he grows on you. Only once you get to see what the war did to him. It is heartbreaking, but the scene serves to show the relationship between him and his butler.

      The books is not perfect. I had to get used to the way the main character speaks. The story starts with a murder mystery and a missing person case and it gets very complicated over time. Not a bad introduction to a series. I wasn't overly bored and there are a few humorous moments.


    • 3/5
      Unbelievably, this was my third try with Sayers' first Lord Peter Wimsey story. Repeated attempts are only explained because I was curious about how the series started and how the character grew. Although I liked Wimsey and his manservant Bunter, the story was less appealing than I expected - or maybe it was exactly what I expected.
    • 2/5
      This was a so-so murder mystery to be solved by Lord Peter Wimsey. The book was very juvenile. I found their speaking affectations contrived (reely). The ending was thrust upon the reader by means of a letter. I will not be reading any other books in this series. This was a free Kindle book and I see why!
    • 3/5
      Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers; (3*)Having just recently found my way into this genre, I must say that I enjoyed this book. From the very beginning we are captivated by Sayers' writing and her character sketches. She only gets better from here. The interaction and the relationships of her characters make the story come alive.We start off with two mysteries at once. A naked man, oh wait...he is wearing sunglasses, is found in someone else's bathtub. Across town another person goes missing. The local policeman has figured out the relationship,; or has he? He has even nabbed the suspects. Lord Peter, our amateur sleuth and friend of Inspector Parker must figure out if one plus one ewuals one or two. Hmmmm...........A very enjoyable read.
    • 5/5
      This is early Sayers, when murder is black and white and probably prinicipled a la Raskolnikov, in a Western civilization quite possible on the brink after WWI. Peter is a long-nosed twit without a lot of depth, but he more than compensates for it with sparkle.
    • 4/5
      Yep, again. When I feel sad or sick or anxious, this is where I come, to Lord Peter with his shell-shock and his fear of responsibility, to his (and Sayers') wit and skill. While this book doesn't have Harriet, and may not for a first time reader offer much of a look into Lord Peter's soul, for an old hand this is both entertaining and a glimpse into his character -- still not far from the youth who was jilted by his pretty but less educated fiancée, who did intelligence work in WWI.(A sudden image of Lord Peter working with Howard Stark, Peggy Carter and Steve Rogers, from Captain America, just came into my head. Fanfiction along those lines could be vastly entertaining...)Bunter is, of course, as entertaining as ever in a Jeevesian (funny, my spellcheck thinks that's a word) way; he's probably one of the best things about the book.
    • 4/5
      I read her Lord Peter Wimsey short stories and hated their snobbery, but I decided to give them one more go. I'm so glad I did! I got sucked in about a 100 pages in, and am now desperate for more. Sure, there are no women (though I hear there's a very nicely characterized one in a few books) at *all*, but LPW is feminine enough for me. He's a character in the Scarlet Pimpernel vein--an English aristocrat who uses his reputation as fop and dilettant to get involved in deadly games of cat and also cat. And yet, despite his excellent taste, his riches, his perfect pedigree and his clever brain, he has his moments of weakness. If not for those, his books would be unreadable. Thanks to them, I can enjoy a whole new series of murder mysteries.
    • 4/5
      My first and still one of my favorite Lord Peter mysteries.
    • 5/5
      Whose Body? was Dorothy Sayers' first Lord Peter novel and was published in 1923. I am reading the Lord Peter books very much out of order, so it was fun to go back and see where it all started. Somehow I had the impression that the Lord Peter books started off a bit weak and gathered steam and depth as they went. Well, I was wrong. Whose Body? is right up there with any of Sayers' other novels, with a well-plotted mystery and fascinating yet believable characters. Sayers hit the ground running when she wrote this book.A dead man has been found reposing in the bathtub of an inoffensive little man named Mr. Thipps. What is even more ridiculous is that the dead man is wearing nothing but a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez — which, as Lord Peter observes, are not exactly enough to satisfy the demands of modesty. Lord Peter confers with his friend Inspector Parker, who is investigating the sudden disappearance of a wealthy Jewish financier. As the story progresses, it becomes evident that the two cases are connected somehow. But how?In this story Sayers explores at length the rising idea that conscience is a physical aberration that can be surgically removed like the appendix. I like a mystery that actually has some theory behind it, some idea that needs working out. Agatha Christie does this sometimes, only hers are psychological hypotheses rather than academic ideas. Wikipedia informs me of a fascinating little nugget, that Sayers originally intended the man's nakedness to be a clue that he was not the missing financier; Lord Peter would have deduced this from the man's not being circumcised. But this was a little too much for the publisher at the time, and the deduction that the bathtub body is not Sir Reuben Levy is made from his calloused workman's hands. Oh, the characters. I think they are unsurpassed in the murder mystery genre. Lord Peter is like a brainy Bertie Wooster, if such a thing can be imagined. He plays the fool the whole time right up to the end when his madness suddenly shows a highly intelligent method. Readers quickly learn that he is a character to be reckoned with (and enjoy watching other characters in the story misjudge him). And yet Lord Peter also has a vulnerability about him that makes him both human and appealing; he has "attacks," terrible memories of his experiences during World War I. The other characters are great too. Bunter is the perfect manservant, an incarnation of Jeeves with his own flavor; Peter's mother, the Dowager Duchess, is so much fun; Mr. Thipps and his beautifully deaf mother are very well drawn and believable, right down to correcting dropped h's; and Inspector Sugg provides the requisite stupid foil for Lord Peter's brilliance. And the villain in this one is particularly chilling. Sayers' irrepressible sense of humor is evident everywhere, both in the characters' dialogue and the wry narrative voice. I love how she describes Alfred Thipps, as a "small, nervous man, whose flaxen hair was beginning to abandon the unequal struggle with destiny." At one point Lord Peter sympathizes with the unhelpful neighbors, saying how Christian feelings really can break up one's domestic peace. Often the humor is highbrow; that is, it relies on adapted quotations from literary works or involves clever puns. The dialogue is perfect — believable and (depending on the speaker) often very witty, peppered with those Britishisms that Anglophiles like myself so enjoy. I feel compelled to mention that there are some anti-semitic sentiments expressed in the story; at one point someone says that "one can be a Jew and still be a good man." Eep! Though perhaps that was considered a progressive statement at the time? From what I've heard, Sayers herself was not anti-semitic, but wrote her characters and settings to accurately reflect their times. It isn't overly pervasive and did not worry me overmuch, but some readers may have a problem with it.I listened to this on audiobook, read by David Case, and I have to say he is one of the best narrators I've ever heard. He wrecks all my theories about how female narrators do better male voices than male narrators can do for female characters. Case's voice for the Duchess is so good I had to listen carefully to make sure it was still him! And he does similar wonders with the other characters. Mr. Thipps is one of my favorites, with his breathless, stop-and-go style. I wish David Case had read all the Lord Peter mysteries!All in all, this is another brilliant one from the "Doyenne of the Golden Age of the Mystery." I will certainly revisit it; I think Sayers is one mystery author whose works won't grow stale after you know the solution. Recommended!
    • 4/5
      My first full Dorothy L. Sayers as I try to like Lord Peter Wimsey. This one made it easier, as he plays off of the Inspector to untangle a body in a bathtub who is not who it should be. His whimsy is at least enjoyable, although he can be quite nasty at times, which is why he's never been my favorite detective. Excellent story, lots of twists, and a brilliantly macabre solution.
    • 4/5
      Lord Peter Wimsey is back from WWI and has taken up detection as a hobby. When a man is found dead in a bathtub wearing only a pince nez, Lord Wimsey starts investigating.
    • 3/5
      The stark naked body was lying in the tub. Not unusual for a proper bath, but highly irregular for murder -- especially with a pair of gold pince-nez deliberately perched before the sightless eyes. What's more, the face appeared to have been shaved after death. The police assumed that the victim was a prominent financier, but Lord Peter Wimsey, who dabbled in mystery detection as a hobby, knew better. In this, his first murder case, Lord Peter untangles the ghastly mystery of the corpse in the bath

      Considering this is the first in the series, Wimsey (plus Bunter, plus the Duchess) are strong characters already, with Wimsey being presented with a dead body in a bathroom, whilst the police are investigating the disappearance of Sir Reuben Levy, a financier who disappeared whilst on a night out.

      It's fairly evident the significance of the unidentified body, but it's just a case of proving it. The written confession unfortunately, comes late in the book, and is all but redundant, as the reader should have worked it all out for themselves by the time it comes out (and it's all done bar the shouting).




    • 5/5
      On second reading (this time via audio book), I still find Wimsey an utter delight -- I had forgotten or not noticed his interest in early printed works, so that just added to the story for me -- and I found myself chuckling at his witty conversation more than once. Also, I have missed Bunter.

      That said -- wow, what a product of its time. While there was nothing fully anti-semitic expressed, the constant need to comment on one of the victim's Jewishness and offer sweeping stereotypical views caused me quite a bit of dismay. I'm taking the opportunity to explore how things I didn't consciously examine in my previous reading may have tainted my worldview, and we'll see how far I get in the re-read of the series.

      Also, hilariously, the audio version that I listened to was a legitimately published copy, but had clearly been copied off the CD, including both the change-CD now prompts and a portion obscured by disk damage. It surprises me that a publisher would release digital content in such a poorly edited state. The reader also took some getting used to -- very British, very lugubrious and languid in his speech, with a great many mouth noises as the the tale progressed. Very... authentic.
    • 5/5
      Mr. Thripps discovers a dead body of a man wearing only pince nez, in his bath tube first thing in the morning. After contacting the proper authorities, Thripps puts through a call to the Dowager Duchess, who in turn contacts her son Lord Peter Wimsey thinking he may be able to help Thripps. Lord Peter has a hobby of criminal investigation and this turns into his first serious case.At first it is supposed the victim was a well-known financier. How his body wound up in Thripps’ bath and what connection there is between the two men are more questions to be answered. Wimsey finds himself with a tangle of clues, some good and some leading to dead ends. Among those is if the body isn’t the financier, then where is he?The first of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy Sayers, written in 1923, it is an enjoyable read from the era. I’ve read the series before and am enjoying revisiting them.
    • 3/5
      Lord Peter Wimsey begins his investigation when he is called in to a suburban home where a naked body of a man has been discovered in a bath. At the same time a financier has gone missing but is not the dead man.
      An interesting mystery, my first Wimsey read but I am unsure that I like the writing style
    • 3/5
      I think I read all the Lord Peter Wimsey stories when I was a teenager. Someone suggested one of the novels for my reading group so this was a reread. I struggled with it. I think my tolerance for the style was higher as a teenager! I ended up on a mix of reading and listening to it - fortunately it is short. I remember the 1980s BBC TV version of this which helps in picturing the character and makes him less annoying. But I did struggle with the read so I don't think rereading the rest is on the agenda.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyable classic cozy mystery. Peter is a quirky character. I enjoyed his family too.There is a missing man and a dead body in a bathtub. Peter's mother asks for his help. Are the two cases connected? Of course they are!
    • 4/5
      A charming old mystery story about an English nobleman in the 1920's who investigates interesting crimes as a hobby. At first he seems shallow and vain, and is only recommended to the reader by the loyalty of his more down-to-earth hyper-competent servant. However, a core decency and a surprising tragic element provide extra depth to his character over the course of the novel.
      The murder mystery moves along at a steady pace without any real surprises or disappointments, and is brought together in a satisfying way.
    • 4/5
      An excellent mystery novel. The dated slang is really distracting, and I can't place some of the references. On the other hand, the epistolary bits and the morbid bits are really quite good. The murderer is a true psychopath; but nobody comes out and says it. He's really quite disturbing. The conversations about morality are worth the trouble. The novel is actually a bit like a play, conveying so much through the conversations, and this works very well.My recollection is that in later novels Sayers just got better and better at what she was already clearly exceptionally good at in this, her first detective novel.
    • 1/5
      DNF. I really really disliked the audio version of this. I think I might enjoy the book itself, but the audio narration was awful. I generally couldn't tell who was speaking based on voice, tone, or inflection. It seems as if the author herself was reading the audio version I was listening to (no narrator was listed) .. In any event, picking a female narrator for a book in which a vast majority of the characters are male seems ill-planned in the present case. I can't finish this. I will try again w a paper version some day.
    • 3/5
      This is the first Dorothy Sayers novel I have read and I am fairly sure there won't be another one. I found the central protagonist irritating; obviously meant to be Woodhousian, this personality didn't work for me as a sleuth and he isn't a patch on Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes (though he invokes the latter on a couple of occasions). I thought the plot was just absurdly convoluted and completely unconvincing as recounted in the post-arrest confession of the murderer. Disappointing.
    • 4/5
      Not nearly as good as most of the later Wimsey stories, but the framework is there. An entirely decent quick read, though.
    • 3/5
      Original Review (17 March 2014):" ‘You see, Lady Swaffham, if ever you want to commit a murder , the thing you’ve got to do is to prevent people from associatin’ their ideas. Most people don’t associate anythin’ – their ideas just roll about like so many dry peas on a tray, makin’ a lot of noise an’ goin’ nowhere, but once you begin lettin’ ’em string their peas into a necklace, it’s goin’ to be strong enough to hang you, what?’ ‘Dear me!’ said Mrs Tommy Frayle, with a little scream, ‘what a blessing it is none of my friends have any ideas at all!’"There is a certain resemblance between Lord Peter Wimsey and Bertie Wooster and the worlds they both inhabit. Of course, the obvious similarity is that both are somewhat nit-witted upper-class toffs who are aided through life both their valets and a group of strong-willed female relatives - Bertie by his aunts and Peter by his mother.For the first part of Whose Body? I just could not get over this similarity, because it seemed that Mrs Tommy Frayle's circle of friends may as well have included most of the book's characters, including Lord Peter. I just could not find an angle to his character that showed him to be more than a two-dimensional caricature of the Wooster archetype.However, then it happened: Whose Body? presented a pivotal moment that changed my appreciation of Lord Peter and his relationship with Bunter, his old friend and servant. I don't want to spoil this experience of discovery for any prospective readers so I won't go into much detail, but the main reason I came to appreciate Lord Peter - and to be fair this is the only memorable part of the story for me even after only a few short weeks of reading the book - is that he is portrayed as a man of his times. Sayers lifts Wimsey out of the cliche and attributes him with a real world experience and complexity that is lacking not only in Bertie Wooster - who of course was always meant as a caricature - but also other notable fictional contemporaries (maybe with the exception of Poirot).Had it not been for this sub-plot, I am not sure I would have enjoyed the story much at all.Thoughts on re-read (14 March 2020):LoL. This book was so much better on the re-read. Whose Body? was still a far cry from the quality of the rest of the series, but knowing the characters better from the other books gives this story so much more life and depth. I may have laughed out loud when Peter argued with his brother about Peter's hobby of sleuthing:‘I do wish you’d keep out of the police courts,’ grumbled the Duke. ‘It makes it so dashed awkward for me, havin’ a brother makin’ himself conspicuous.’‘Sorry, Gerald,’ said the other, ‘I know I’m a beastly blot on the ’scutcheon.’‘Why can’t you marry and settle down and live quietly, doin’ something useful?’ said the Duke, unappeased.‘Because that was a wash-out, as you perfectly well know,’ said Peter. ‘Besides,’ he added cheerfully, ‘I’m bein’ no end useful. You may come to want me your-self; you never know. When anybody comes blackmailin’ you, Gerald, or your first deserted wife turns up unexpectedly from the West Indies, you’ll realise the pull of havin’ a private detective in the family. “Delicate private business arranged with tact and discretion. Investigations undertaken. Divorce evidence a speciality. Every guarantee!” Come, now.’‘Ass!’ said Lord Denver, throwing the newspaper violently into his armchair.Hehe. Those of you who know, will know. But this made a lot more sense on re-reading. I also enjoyed Peter's relationships with all of the other main characters much more because of knowing how these will develop.It is such a strange first novel for a series, tho. There is a lot more of the feel of a Stevenson story to this than there is of Conan Doyle. This is changed in the later books, of course, but on the re-read I was reminded of a particular Stevenson short story (to name it would be a spoiler). Still, I really liked re-reading this, and would rate the book much higher if the onslaught of Wimsey (which is toned down in the books that follow) weren't such a distraction from the mystery and hadn't, after my first encounter with this book, made me put off reading the second for so long.
    • 4/5
      This is the first of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. Lord Peter is a moneyed gentleman about town who enjoys dabbling in mysteries but also occasionally suffers bouts of ‘nerve exhaustion’ from fighting in WWI.In this first installment, a gentleman wakes up to find an unknown, thoroughly naked dead body in his bathtub. Lord Wimsey takes on finding the how, why and who. He is aided by his friend, Detective Parker of Scotland Yard who is coincidentally missing an esteemed Jewish financier – and although the easy solution, embraced by the bungling Inspector Sugg, is that the two are the same, Wimsey soon proves this wrong, but continues to search for a connection in the cases.We also meet Wimsey’s amazingly competent valet Bunter, who along with Wimsey’s mother, are excellent minor characters.It took me a while to engage with the plot, but the characters drew me in.I’ll be back for more.
    • 4/5
      A delightfully clever story staring the absolutely adorable Lord Peter Wimsey as a gentleman detective who takes up cases at his fancy. Here, he works with Scotland Yard detective Charles Parker to determine (1) whose body it is that's found in poor Mr. Thripp's bath, and (2) what connection, if any, it may have to a missing financier.The whodunit is twisty and smart, and the unravelling has that nice feeling of anticipation and dread that comes with suspecting the least-possible suspect, or so it appears on the surface.The length of this is closer to a novella than a novel (142 pages, or 70% of the Kindle file), and its not quite as tightly written as the Wimsey short stories, but it is just as much fun. We get a bit more of Lord Peter's character here, too, beyond the witty book collector. Looking forward to the next!
    • 4/5
      An above-average mystery set in post WWI England, with Lord Peter Wimsey playing amateur sleuth. The mystery is interesting, but the interplay of Wimsey and other characters like his valet Bunter are what makes this more than just another murder whodunit.
    • 3/5
      In this first Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, his mother interests him in a case in which a corpse is found in a man's bathtub. Then his friend Detective Parker of Scotland Yard seeks his assistance in locating a missing man. Although Inspector Sugg suggested the man in the tub and Levy were one and the same, Detective Parker and Lord Peter knew evidence suggested otherwise. While the book is well-plotted, the writing style takes a while to engage the reader. I listened to the version read by Nadia May, a pseudonym for Wanda McCaddon. She read a bit more rapidly in places than the ideal speed.