Please note: I first published this book review on the “Goodreads”-website in 2023.
My rating: 3 (of 5) “stars”
I bought a paperback copy of this book which was published in 1982 by Hodder & Stoughton. (It was originally published in 1928.) They still sell the book, but different editions.
In hindsight, I’d say that this collection of short stories was not the best choice to familiarize myself with Sayers’s most famous crime-solving character, Lord Peter Wimsey.
I thought that the plot of most of the stories contained in this book was far-fetched; in one story, one of the characters makes a similar observation and calls the events “preposterous.” In addition, I was able to guess many of the plot twists in advance, which considerably lessened my reading pleasure.
I wasn’t overly impressed with the character of Lord Peter Wimsey, who remained vague and superficial to me – and that’s why I think it would’ve been a better choice to first read a full-length Lord Peter Wimsey crime novel; short stories don’t leave a writer much room to develop a character; for a reader who’s not yet familiar with Wimsey, and doesn’t have a clear picture in their mind of this character, the short stories are a disappointment.