OK, you want a classic? I'll give you a classic, and one that's a delightful read as well, with a
superb audio version for those who prefer audio books. Dorothy L. Sayers very first Lord Peter Wimsey novel,
Whose Body.
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Originally Posted by Amazon.com
Wimseys mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver, rings her son with news of such a quaint thing. She has heard through a friend that Mr. Thipps, a respectable Battersea architect, found a dead man in his bathwearing nothing but a gold pince-nez. Lord Wimsey makes his way straight over to Mr. Thipps, and a good look at the body raises a number of interesting questions. Why would such an apparently well groomed man have filthy black toenails, flea bites and the scent of carbolic soap lingering on his corpse? Then comes the disappearance of oil millionaire Sir Reuben Levy, last seen on the Battersea Park Road. With his beard shaved he would look very similar to the man found in the bath, but is Sir Levy really dead?
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Originally Posted by Goodreads.com
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.
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Originally Posted by FadedPage.com
"Whose Body" is something of an apprentice work. Lord Peter is here more a bundle of characteristics than a character: a collector of rare books and incunabula, facile with quotations, fluent in French and probably in Latin, a skillful and sensitive pianist who never needs to practise, slightly built but possessed of "curious" strength and speed which he maintains without exercise. Over subsequent books, this caricature smooths and deepens into one of the most interesting and attractive detectives in fiction.
In spite of its awkwardness, Whose Body is worth reading. The plot is clever, the villain is believable and sadistic, and most of the supporting characters are a delight. Some of these characters are further developed in later novels: Bunter, Parker, the Dowager Duchess, Freddy Arbuthnot. Others fortunately are not. Sayers is much better with people she might recognise as "like us" then with people from other social groups.
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Amazon.com -- $0.99
Audible.com -- $7.99 (WhisperSync) or 1 credit (read by the Nadia May, aka Wanda McCaddon!)
Canadian Public Domain -- Life+50 countries ONLY, please.
AmazonUK -- £1.99
AudibleUK - WhisperSync -- £6.20
Goodreads
Really, any of Dorothy Sayers' Wimsey books would qualify as Classics, and all can be read standalone. But let's go with the very first, since I know Jon prefers we read in order.
(And yes, we did read a Sayers way back in 2009. Murder Must Advertise)
This book is short (170 pages), and inexpensive, so both of those boxes are ticked. Plus, it's a good read, and I'm way overdue to re-read it. The only disappointment is that this was never dramatized with Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter. But with the superb narration by Nadia May for the audio book, that's less of a consideration.