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WHOSE BODY?

by Dorothy Sayers

Dorothy Sayers’ Whose Body? is the first of 16 detective novels published by Sayers, one of the queens of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

This 1923 novel introduces Lord Peter Wimsey, considered the father of the amateur “gentleman sleuth” who will appear in many British novels for decades to come.

Read: Buy it used, read it for free, or get it on Amazon. (Reading time: ~4 hours)

Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.

Weigh In: Share your thoughts using the form below!

THE GAME IS AFOOT … BUT SHOULD IT BE A GAME? So much to unpack here … For one thing, Wimsey seems self-aware. For another, Parker seems to have no qualms about calling him out. It’s a great scene in Whose Body?

 

ASSOCIATIONS AND RIDDLES – “Thing I object to in detective stories,” said Mr. Piggott, “is the way fellows remember every bloomin’ thing that’s happened to ’em within the last six months. They’re always ready with their time of day and was it rainin’ or not, and what were they doin’ on such an’ such a day. Reel it all off like a page of poetry. But one ain’t like that in real life … One day’s so like another, I’m sure I couldn’t remember—well, I might remember yesterday, p’r’aps, but I couldn’t be certain about what I was doin’ last week if I was to be shot for it.”

… “But they don’t really get it like that, you know. I mean, a man doesn’t just say, ‘Last Friday I went out at 10 a.m. to buy a mutton chop. As I was turning into Mortimer Street I noticed a girl of about twenty-two with black hair and brown eyes, wearing a green jumper, check skirt, Panama hat and black shoes, riding a Royal Sunbeam Cycle at about ten miles an hour turning the corner by the Church of St. Simon and St. Jude on the wrong side of the road riding towards the market place!’ It amounts to that, of course, but it’s really wormed out of him by a series of questions.”

 

Then Wimsey and Parker worm the details out of Piggott through a series of questions. 

CORPSES FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH AND SCIENTIFIC STUDY – In Whose Body?, we learn that bodies used for medical research were usually vagrants supplied by the workhouses and free hospitals. Whoa.

PANIC ATTACKS AND PTSD – So, such much to unpack here. What, if anything, surprised you about these scenes? Did Wimsey’s experience seem real to you?

 

WHAT DOES “BEING USEFUL” LOOK LIKE? What do we learn from the scene below? What does being useful actually look like? Is Gerald useful? Is the Duchess useful? How about Lord Peter Wimsey? Are you useful? Am I?

 

THE STRANGE + CREEPY SIR JULIAN FREKE – Carolyn would argue Freke made roughly 142 bad decisions, any one of which might have made him a suspect. (He swapped the bodies, risked being seen or heard by his servants, risked being seen in the Levy house, risked being seen as he deposited the body in a random bathtub …)

Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for people who love mysteries, thrillers, introspection, and good conversation. Each month, your hosts, Sarah Harrison and Carolyn Daughters, will discuss a game-changing mystery or thriller from the 19th and 20th centuries. Together, we’ll see firsthand how the genre evolved.

Along the way, we’ll entertain ideas, prospects, theories, doubts, and grudges, along with the occasional guest. And we hope to enter

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