The Nine Tailors

This novel, Dorothy L. Sayers' best-known, is, without doubt, one of her best-if not the best. Sayers takes the customary English village, and makes something new of it, by setting it in the Fen country, and by giving to it a church, which, as the well-drawn rector describes, "East Anglia is famous for the size and splendour of its parish churches. Still, we flatter ourselves we are almost unique, even in this part of the world." The church services show great feeling and power, and neatly tie in with the theme of religion. The church possesses bells, the book being best-known for the bell-ringing, described in such powerfully beautiful descriptions as:"Out over the flat, white wastes of fen, over the spear-straight, steel-dark dykes and the wind-bent, groaning poplar trees, bursting from the snow-choked louvres of the belfry, whirled away southward and westward in gusty blasts of clamour to the sleeping counties went the music of the bells-little Gaude, silver Sabaoth, strong John and Jericho, glad Jubilee, sweet Dimity and old Batty Thomas, with great Tailor Paul bawling and striding like a giant in the midst of them. Up and down went the shadows of the ringers upon the walls, up and down went the shadows of the ringers upon the walls, up and down went the scarlet sallies flickering roofwards and floorwards, and up and down, hunting in their courses, went the bells of Fenchurch St. Paul."The bells are also eerily threatening-"Bells are like cats and mirrors-they're always queer, and it doesn't do to think too much about them."-which is fitting, as the plot hinges on bells: both an ingenious cryptogram (again, to quote the rector, "I should never have thought of the possibility that one might make a cipher out of change-ringing. Most ingenious."), and an ingenious murder method.The whodunit aspect of the story is not neglected; for once, it is a genuine problem. The body is buried in a grave, and involves a complicated problem of identity, and an unknown method. The victim, as Wimsey describes, is "a perfect nuisance, dead or alive, and whoever killed him was a public benefactor. I wish I'd killed him myself." Wimsey is engaging here, and not the parody of Bertie Wooster he sometimes is-he is a human being, without being the equally obnoxious creature found in Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon. The detection is excellent, and, as was to be the trend in nearly every detective story following (especially Nicholas Blake's), the detective "felt depressed. So far as he could see, his interference had done no good to anybody and only made extra trouble. It was a thousand pities that the body of Deacon had ever come to light at all. Nobody wanted it." These tie in with the burden of guilt and innocence, redemption and repentance.Finally, the book comes to its powerful climax in a flooded village, "with an aching and intolerable melancholy, like the noise of the bells of a drowned city pushing up through the overwhelming sea."This is not

The 1934 Dorothy L. Sayers mystery titled "The Nine Tailors" is not about the garment industry. Instead it centers on the venerable tradition of "change ringing" still practiced in England in which a given number of church bells or "tellers" are rung in every possible combination. So nine of them would have to be rung in (what we call in math class) "9 factorial" or 362,880 different combinations. You can figure out how long that would take at one peal per second. Well the combinations do play a part in the solution of a particularly involved plot concerning jewelry stolen considerably in the past, a freshly dug grave with the wrong body in it, a flood, a snowstorm, and a villageful of really interesting characters, one of whom might be a thief, another a murderer, and so on. However, I am not reviewing the book itself but a marvelously effective complete reading of it by Lord Peter Wimsey himself, which is to say character actor Ian Carmichael who played Wimsey so well on the television series (now available on both VHS and DVD from Acorn Media). Here is the novel, complete on 6 cassettes, from Audio Partners, which is increasing their catalogue of complete mystery recordings very quickly indeed. Of course, Carmichael is the perfect Wimsey; but he is also very good at every other voice needed to make this an excellent reading. Some books-on-tape readers merely use their own voices throughout; and success depends on how interesting and appropriate that single voice is. Like David Suchet on the companion Poirot readings, Carmichael makes his reading into a full dramatization. Highly recommended for those who love a really intricate mystery read by a terrific actor.

I would agree with some others that this is the best mystery of all time. It indeed is a book best to be read in the winter, in a big comfortable easy chair, in front of a roaring fire.I have several copies, but am always on the lookout for another one. Sayers has her ace detective and consumate English gentleman Lord Peter Wimsey in an absolutely engrossing rural landscape. Like many traditional country areas, this one is dominated by a massive church. And the parish has some strong bell ringers, but also some members with dark secrets. The plot develops slowly, like fine wine.I am sorry that the Masterpiece Theater version is not yet out in video. Then I could read the book and watch the video throughout the long, freezing winters we have in my home in Arctic Alaska. Enjoy this book. Cherish it and buy a few extra copies, including a few for very close friends. It is a book you will want to keep handy on your bookshelf for the rest of your days! Earl Finkler in Barrow, Alaska

When I first read this book, I was in high school. Having encountered the phenomenon of change ringing in Groves Dictionary of Music and read that "The Nine Tailors" was a novel which involved it, I assumed at first that something so old and specialized would be long out of print and unavailable. Imagine my delight when I found that the local college library had it! Presumably unable to borrow it, I felt very daring smuggling it into the 24-hour reading room and leaving it on a coat rack so that I could read it even when the library was closed. It was exciting again to discover later that it was actually in print and I could buy it for myself. This I have had to do several times over the years, because my copies keep disappearing-- probably loaned to friends.The continued availability of a novel on such an esoteric subject can only be testimony to the "the worth of the work" (one of Sayers's telling phrases in another of her books). It is, indeed, not as readily available as some of her other Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. I have read most of them, believe that this is the best, and wouldn't be surprised if the author agreed. Yet many times I have noticed bookstores having several of the others in stock, but not The Nine Tailors. This has to be a sad commentary on the reluctance of many readers, even of mysteries, to venture into a quaint, abstruse subculture foreign to their own environments. Yet, happily, the real connoisseurs of the genre, who knowingly demand it even on special order, are numerous enough to keep it in print.This is the kind of book to take up cozily by the fire, or while snuggled unter the quilts, in wintertime as the snow falls and the wind whistles outside; for such is the weather on a bleak New Year's Eve in its first scenes. The circumstances are important-- so intricately crafted is the novel that almost everything is important. Lord Peter and his valet, driving through the fens between the world wars, meet with an automobile mishap compelling them to venture forth on foot. Soon they encounter the vicar and other salt-of-the-earth folk in the nearest village, and circumstances draw them quickly into the life of this close-knit community of good, solid, honest people unanimous in the love of the mighty, exquisite old church which is their heritage from a long-dissolved medieval monastery. Places like this really used to exist frequently in rural England. To read of them now, when they are so rare, is to meditate on what we have lost as time marches on. Although I doubt that Sayers was writing in this mode, the nostalgia which the book provokes in a reader today can be very poignant. But, beyond nostalgia, we can imbibe a gentle, abiding "wonder and delight" in these humble villagers' experience of their faith, and what it has wrought among them, which badly needs to be recovered in much of Christendom today. Fictional entertainment though it may be, if this book inspires a

Unlike some of her Lord Peter mysteries, this novel can be read by itself, and it is a delight. About a murder done in an old church in the English countryside, you will learn more about the ringing of church bells than you thought possible. Lord Peter is at the top of his form, literate, intelligent, and a thinker beyond being just a mystery novel detective. None of the characters are one or two dimensional, and each of them is developed fully and delightfully. When it comes to mystery fiction, you can't do much better than Sayers...which may be one reason her novels appeared on PBS' MASTERPIECE THEATRE rather than MYSTERY! They are indeed, masterpieces