"Five Red Herrings", Dorothy L Sayers

The characterisation is good. The landscape descriptions are very vivid. The first scene or so is excellent, and for a few pages I thought I'd misjudged a book I remembered as disappointing and mechanical.

On the other hand, Wimsey is in full silly-ass mode (he gets less annoying later on, but that relies on the reader getting that far) and unfortunately the detection sections of the book are pretty boring, as is the section at the end -- in which the author doubtless took great professional pride -- when six different theories as to how the murder was committed are presented one after another, each one nominally fitting the known facts and laying great stress on its timetable.( Read more... )