Book Report: Whose Body?

Are there really eleven Lord Peter novels? I mean, I know there are, I’ve read them all, and I could probably have come up with all the titles if I had to. But it was a shock to look at the list of them, all together like that. I mean, I think of myself as re-reading the Wimsey books fairly often (far too often, actually), but it turns out I only re-read Murder Must Advertise, Gaudy Night, Busman’s Honeymoon, occasionally Clouds of Witness and very occasionally The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. Well, and perhaps The Nine Tailors. Rather a lot, really. But that leaves the scots one, which I don’t own and have read, I think, once; the lesbian one, which I don’t own, have read a couple of times and don’t remember liking at all; the first Harriet one, which I think I own (yes, and the lesbian one, too, somewhere) and remember liking bits of, but haven’t had the urge to reread in ever so, and the second Harriet one, which used to be my favorite, but somehow the idea of picking it up again depresses me. And Whose Body, which was returned to my employer last week, and which I picked up to read almost without thinking about it.

In fact, I wound up returning the book myself when I was halfway through, thinking that I wasn’t going to bother finishing it and I didn’t want to bother schlepping it home. And then the next day I got it back and did schlepp it home, because I couldn’t remember how it ended, and wanted to finish it.

So that’s all right.

I still felt that there were more things that were irritating about the book than enjoyable, or at least that it was close. I’ve gone right off Peter Wimsey, or more accurately I’ve gone right off Dorothy Sayers, and yet…

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.