The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928)
1987 N.E.L. blurb:
Lord Peter Wimsey bent down over General Fentiman and drew the Morning Post gently away from the gnarled old hands. Then with a quick jerk, he lifted the quiet figure. It came up all of a piece, stiff as a wooden doll...
But it was not a simple case of death from natural causes. For instance, who was the mysterious Mr. X who fled when he was wanted for questioning? And which of the General's heirs, both members of the Club, is lying?
This sinister case takes Dorothy L. Sayers' unique detective from London to Paris and finally back to the austere and sombre dignity of the Bellona Club itself.
My review:
One of the early—and, therefore, good—Sayers. Wimsey does a good job as detective, although his methods are very similar to those of Dr. Thorndyke, with his minute analysis of dust particles, the Marsh's test for arsenic, hatred of modern art (c.f. The Stoneware Monkey et al.), Bunter taking photographs like Polton. Other Freeman themes include wills and inheritance (survivorship plays a large part), fraud, poisoning, rigor mortis and exhumations—Wimsey even comments that "that fellow Freeman is full of plots about poisonings and wills and survivorship, isn't he?" and mention is made of the classic A Silent Witness. However, despite the brilliant evocation of the stodgy Bellona Club and the contrasting Bohemian London, and the good characterisation (Sayers manages to arouse interest in and sympathy with a character the reader does not meet until late in the book, and the poverty of George Fentiman and wife is obviously the ancestor of the Coles' Poison in the Garden Suburb), the book is ultimately a disappointment: there are too many Fortunate mutterings about food, and the murder plot lacks the ingenuity one expects from Sayers, so that the second half of the story is an anti-climax..