[Dazrin]

And here we go...I have some catching up to do...

Originally Posted by issybird

I couldn't resist this image, as it's at such odds with the text!

Originally Posted by gmw

I saw that cover too and got a good chuckle. I was starting to wonder if there was going to be a cover that showed the key evidence visible in the bathtub.

I had this lovely cover:

I can't even tell what that is supposed to be. I think the generic "Amazon Public Domain Cover" would be better, at least then I could include it for "text only" in the bingo challenge.

Originally Posted by issybird

So, what did we think of Whose Body?

Lord Peter is obviously a mash-up of Sherlock Holmes and Bertie Wooster, with a dash of the Scarlet Pimpernel in his silly-ass-about-town-demeanor to hide his serious side. I'd add Nancy Drew except she came later; but the way Scotland Yard hops to when Lord Peter say "Jump!" reminds me a lot of the way Nancy Drew would order Chief McGuinness around.

It's been too long since I read ND but other than that these are obvious, I do like Lord Peter more than Wooster (although Jeeves and Bunter are both great.)

Originally Posted by gmw

A few people already commented on the voting thread that this is not necessarily a good starting place to see the best of Lord Peter. It seemed to be a book of great potential, but never quite make it. Too much happened "off stage", only to be chatted about later by Lord Peter and his friend Mr Parker. And most disappointing of all was the disaster of a wrap-up, with the great long confession over-explaining every detail. A real "first book" mistake of not trusting your readers to have kept up.

Agree on the wrap-up. That whole confession thing was a mess and just a recap of what we should have been able to guess anyway.

Originally Posted by latepaul

The other attitude-of-its-time I struggled with was a class one. This whole paternalistic aristocracy with servants thing, where Lord Peter is a good egg and always treats "his man" Bunter fairly, is somewhat hard to swallow. The fact that he creates long days with little sleep for Bunter, by the fact of his "hobby" of being a detective is brushed over. And of course we have no idea of Bunter's inner life or even his concerns outside his relationship to Wimsey.
...
Another stray observation - did anyone else stumble over who Parker was? I actually skipped the preface in case of spoilers but in skimming over I caught the fact that Parker was a detective with the Police who was also Wimsey's friend. If I hadn't read that I would have been confused about the detective part. When he first appears Wimsey greets him clearly as a friend and he's hoping he's "full of crime" (i.e. has a case for them to investigate) but it's not clear that Parker's a detective. I kept waiting for this to be made clear. Then I went back and double-checked, but still couldn't find any explicit references. For my reading, from the text alone, Parker is a friend who is another amateur detective. I found it odd.

I have had the same thought about class boundaries and expectations in a lot of books from this time period (and before), it actually wasn't as bad here as in some of the others I have read - at least Bunter is interested in what Lord Peter is doing and wants to take part since he gets to partake of his own hobby as well.

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

So, being the dastardly academic that I am, I was curious about this theme, so I went looking for discussions on the topic.

I landed in a particularly interesting article by Amy Schwartz in Moment magazine. The article details what it calls Sayers' "obsession" with her Jewish characters and their place in her world.

Thanks for this, very good read and interesting background.

Originally Posted by CRussel

One weakness, pointed out earlier here, is that Parker isn't well explained. We know from later books that he's a police inspector.

Spoiler:

and ultimately more, Lord Peter's brother-in-law.

but while the clues are there to explain him, it's not well spelled out.

Both you and latepaul said something along these lines but I didn't have that experience, I wondered a little the first time he showed up but it was fairly quickly explained I thought.

Originally Posted by issybird

I gather that the evidence in the bathtub only made it to the initial US edition; it was later purged as too graphic. It does alter the story a bit; it was different if they could say from the very start that the body was not Sir Reuben.

It wasn't explicit but the version I read hinted at that, Peter said he knew it wasn't Levy because of what he saw in the tub; circumcision was the only thing I could think of that would tell Lord Peter he wasn't Mr. Levy right away.

Originally Posted by issybird

It is a bit of a relief that Sayers managed to avoid the trope where Sir Julian was caught before he committed suicide.

Did we read different versions?

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Thing is, would we have thought "Where are the comments about the Jews?" if they weren't there? I would not have thought that if they were not there.

I would not have thought that if they weren't there either, but I suspect that many people who this was originally intended for (i.e., those who were reading it in the 1920's) would have, especially given Mr. Levy's centrality to the story. Things that stand out to us in their outrageousness are often the details that make stories seem plausible to the original audience. To clarify my stance, I wish that the anti-semitic and other prejudiced language hadn't been there but since they are present they make the story feel more authentic.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

As just a detective story, the biggest issue is that there was no way possible to come up with the solution. Yes, it may be difficult in some stories to come up with the answer, but the clues are there. This one the clues where not all there and it's no possible to deduce the solution. So as a mystery, it's a big fail.

What clues were missing for you? I thought most of the major ones were there (motive, opportunity, etc.)