Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers
Murder Must Advertise
by Dorothy Sayers
Originally published in 1933
Photos in this post are of the handsome Franklin Library edition (1989)
This famous mystery has been well reviewed and discussed by much abler pens than mine, and I don’t have the time at this moment to do it justice with a good long glance. But regardless, I shall make a few quick observations:
A friend writing a mystery novel once read me a line from a book on the craft of writing. He had it written out on paper and stuck to his computer. I’ve long forgotten the source, but the line went something like:
“Your dialogue should crackle. Like Rice Crispies. Snap! Crackle! Pop!”
And that line kept going through my head while buried in the dialog of Murder Must Advertise. The dialogue, the DIALOGUE ladies and gentlemen, is so much fun. I don’t know when I’ve come across this brand of dialogue since an old Cary Grant comedy about newspaper writers.
I grew to love the detective, Lord Peter Wimsey. He is one sleuth a reader grows increasingly fond of as a man, in a way that Sherlock Holmes can never achieve– regardless of his fine cases and deducing skills.
Some of her descriptions of people, their choices, and their lives hit me personally with a choking in the throat. They were so realistic. I felt she was describing folks I know, and the atmosphere changed from a humorous murder mystery to weighty real life truth. For most folks this book would never strike them that way. Indeed it is simply a fun bit of fiction. But I have a few unusual connections whose lifestyles I’ve rarely heard evaluated so aptly. She must have had a lot of knowledge of people to make such characters and have such insight into their paths of life.
There was one conclusion near the end of the book that was not entirely satisfactory to me–but I shall say nothing so as not to spoil the ending.
And that about sums it up. Good synopsis for this tale are in overabundance online, so I won’t write one here.
A few quotes:
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“My brother, being an English gentleman, possesses a library in all his houses…”
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“If only I had ever seen Willis engaged in any game or sport, I should have know better where I stood, but he seemed to despise the open-air life–and that in itself, if you come to think of it, is sinister.”
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A word of advice from an English chap to a fellow who was always bemoaning little facts about himself (like having never been to Yale):
“You oughtn’t to say a thing like that, old son,” said Bredon, really distressed. “It’s not done.”
“No–I dare say I’m not a gentleman. I’ve never been–“
“If you tell me you’ve never been to a public school,” said Bredon, “I shall scream. What with Copley and Smayle, and all the other pathetic idiots who go about fostering inferiority complexes, and weighing up the rival merits of this place and that place, when it doesn’t matter a damn anyway, I’m fed up. Pull yourself together…you mustn’t go about creating intolerable situations, you know. ” 🙂
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If describing this book in one paragraph to a friend I would say:
The dialogue is fired off with “His Girl Friday” rapidity, the humor and wit is second cousin to “The Thin Man” films, the mystery itself is worthy of Dame Agatha, and meanwhile D. Sayers is making a telling commentary on the advertising business, marketing ethics in general, strong families, drug dealers, and the living of lives of integrity. All without seeming to do so. Skillful, yet unpretentious. This is detective fiction worth owning.
