The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy Sayers

[keilexandra]

The Nine Tailors
by Dorothy Sayers
397 pages (trade paperback)
Genre: Fiction/Mystery/Historical

In The Nine Tailors, Lord Peter Wimsey visits a small village called Fenchurch St. Paul. A mystery is afoot, of course. The bells, to whom the title refers, play a major role that I didn't "get" until the second last page of the book, and even then I didn't truly appreciate their significance to the theme. Apparently this is part of a linked series, in which case--oops. But Sayers did not click for me on several levels, so I don't think it would have made a difference.

I want to say the style is hard-boiled noir--it is so very British--but the murder is not as important as in typical noir pieces. In fact, the mystery itself is secondary to the process of solving said mystery. This is a very different book from the typical historical mysteries, dense with assumptions of knowledge like how a church bell-tower is structured. And the plot is simply not compelling to me, although I admire Sayer's command of plotting and can see why others appreciate her so much. She is dissimilar to, yet much the same as, Agatha Christie; Christie also plots complexly but manages to make them more accessible--both ouvres have a distinctly British feel that I enjoy on a meta level but cannot make up for lack of plot or character engagement.

Major ROT13 spoilers: Fb gur oryyf xvyyrq Qrnpba--vf gung npghnyyl cbffvoyr? V jnfa'g njner gung ivoengvbaf/unezbal pbhyq or sngny. Vg svgf cresrpgyl jvgu gur erfg bs gur cybg ohg V unir gebhoyr oryvrivat va gur cynhfvovyvgl bs npghnyyl qlvat sebz oryy-evatvat. Jrveq.

In conclusion, an excellent and deep piece of literature, though not one that I particularly care to read again. The ending is cool in a fun-fact kind of way but, unless you're a true mystery fan, not worth plodding through 400 pages of labyrinthe story to find out. YMMV, as I know many on my flist will disagree vehemently in comments (I look forward to the discussion!).

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I'll just say what I said in my post on the book: that I like the series, but this is probably the weakest of the ones I've read.

[keilexandra]

Damnit, I need to subtract books/authors from my TBR list, not add them. :P

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

1) I think it makes a huge difference whether you have the character background in this series. Starting at the end is like what papersky says about the story being the shaft of the spear: you can't just poke somebody with a spearpoint and have it work.

2) I can think of very few things less like hard-boiled noir than Dorothy Sayers, so I'd kind of like to know what you think of when you think noir or hard-boiled.

[keilexandra]

1. Hrm.

2. I feel like Sayers is perfectly representative of hard-boiled noir, except that this novel didn't read like a mystery to me--more like a really long vignette in the life of Lord Peter (whom I confess I am not particularly interested in, related to point 1). And hard-boiled noir = mystery in my mind, though that is probably an unfair equation. (It's a funny name, too. Why is the noir hard-boiled?)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, "hard-boiled noir = mystery" is about as fair as "cyberpunk = speculative fiction." The Hobbit is not cyberpunk, and Dorothy Sayers didn't write noir.

The thing that's hard-boiled is not the noir but the detective. If you label a detective/mystery novel hard-boiled, you've got a detective who is likely to declare that he doesn't take nothin' from nobody, see? and no broad is going to trick him again. He'll come out shooting, dollface, because it's a cold, cruel world out there, and you gotta look out for number one. (Then he will go home and drink a lot and hate himself for it. The male pronoun is deliberately chosen here: there are now female hard-boiled detectives, but it started out very much male and sexist.)

[keilexandra]

Perhaps it should be a one-way arrow. Cyberpunk is part of speculative fiction; If it isn't speculative fiction, can it be cyberpunk? (I am unfamiliar with the subgenre so would not be able to say for sure.) Similarly, I consider "mystery" one perquisite of hard-boiled noir.

Sayers is certainly hard-boiled noir in tone; but how is Lord Peter a hard-boiled detective?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That's what I'm saying: cyberpunk is a subset of speculative fiction. Hard-boiled noir is a subset of mystery. But you still haven't told me why you think Dorothy Sayers's tone is hard-boiled noir. I can't tell you how Lord Peter is a hard-boiled detective because I feel very strongly that he isn't, and that Dorothy Sayers's tone is not. The Nine Tailors is set in a small English country village; noir is generally urban. Nobody in The Nine Tailors is connected to organized crime. Nobody is betraying each other right and left. There is no atmosphere of fatalistic gloom.

I'm not saying that Wikipedia is the last word on (anything including) noir or hard-boiled crime fiction, but give it a look, see if that helps indicate why I think you've got the wrong mystery subgenre label here.

[keilexandra]

Hrm. I had been under the impression that hard-boiled noir -> Holmes & Watson; Sayers's style and tone reminds me of Doyle's.

But, from Wikipedia, I do concede that I have the wrong mystery subgenre label. Further confusion stemmed from the fact that I thought you were arguing Sayers as a perfect representation of hard-boiled noir, rather than that Sayers is totally different from such (since I said originally that Sayers reminded me of the subgenre but not quite).

So how would you classify Sayers, and/or Sherlock Holmes?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"British mystery classics," I suppose.

[kate_nepveu]

Also, it's not a historical mystery, in that it was written contemporaneous with the time period it's set in--hence the assumptions.

I love this one for all the characters and the atmosphere, the way it mixes precision and otherworldiness. But it would be a very different experience if you didn't already know and care about Peter.

[keilexandra]

Ah! Sayers was writing in her contemporary time period? Well, that explains some things.

[inkylj.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I think I disagree with the other folks in the thread (except mrissa's clarification of the noir thing). I don't think this is one of the weaker books in the series (on the contrary, I think it's one of the better ones), but I also think it stands alone pretty well -- there aren't a lot of long-running plot threads or recurring characters that come up in it.

That said, Sayers has a couple of different themes that show up in the Lord Peter books, and this one is basically all The English Countryside with no real snappy dialogue or romance or academics or writing life or action themes to break it up. (I guess writing life comes up a bit with that one girl, but it's pretty minor.) It's conceivable that you might like prefer Strong Poison (which kicks off the romance theme) or Murder Must Advertise (which is mostly dark-edged office comedy) or the short stories collected in Lord Peter (which run the gamut, but are mostly action and comedy).

Finally, re the ending: I see this straight dope article suggesting it's pretty implausible, which doesn't really surprise me (I guess it may have been less-disproved at the time Sayers was writing, though). Sayers does enough realistic stuff with characters that it's easy to miss her being sensationalist; there's a famous scene where Peter stands on top of one of those statue-spurting-water fountains and dives into the pool without breaking his neck, and another where he really does break his neck (well, his collarbone) and is up and active a day or two later.

[keilexandra]

My friend did break his collarbone over a weekend and seemed fine on Monday, but he also had the benefit of modern medicine, an ER, and an immobilizing sling.

I'm not fond of The English Countryside, generally speaking. My favorite part of THE NINE TAILORS was the cryptography section; does Sayer revisit that theme?

[inkylj.livejournal.com]

Uh, maybe. Depending on what you liked about it. There's a short story involving solving a cryptic crossword which has the actual crossword included, but I imagine that's a little too on-the-nose. Murder Must Advertise (a novel) has an extended thread about tracking down just how somebody at the advertising agency is signaling to the members of a cocaine-smuggling ring, and there's another short story involving infiltrating a gang that has a bunch of cloak-and-dagger stuff. Any of those like what you're looking for?

What I like about Sayers is the plotting and deduction are both Christie-solid, but the characters are like actual people instead of tokens for the current mystery (also there are a lot of funny bits, though not really quotably funny). But if the characters don't do much for you then I imagine this isn't really an advantage over Christie.

[keilexandra]

The cryptic crossword story sounds very cool, but short stories are so hard to track down. I will add MURDER MUST ADVERTISE to my TBR list, for when I come back to mysteries.

I didn't find NINE TAILORS particularly witty (although I'm a fan of dry wit in general), so maybe I'm just bouncing off Sayers's style.

[inkylj.livejournal.com]

All the short stories are collected as Lord Peter, so possibly you'll want to add that to the to-read-later list also.