"Have His Carcase" by Dorothy L Sayers

Another in the sequence of Lord Peter Wimsey murder mysteries. Mystery writer Harriet Vane, walking along the beach, discovers the body of a man with his throat cut; the blood is still flowing. By the time she can raise the alarm the tide has come in and removed the body. But she has the photographs and the razor used. Was it suicide or murder. Harriet's wannabe fiance, Lord Peter Wimsey, travels down from London to investigate the death of a gigolo with hopes.

Classic murder mystery stuff with a very clever twist at the end. But beware, there is some complicated code-cracking and a family tree and these require illustrations. My kindle edition failed to download the illustrations.

Great quotes:

• "I always drive more mellowly on a pint of beer." (C 4)
• "All work has its tedious moments, which are repaid by those that are more agreeable." (C 7)
• "That is the gigolo. He is not a man, he is a doll stuffed with sawdust.' He is bought, he is sold, and sometimes there is an unpleasantness." (C 7)
• "Ce n'est pas rigolo que d'être gigolo." [It isn't fun to be a gigolo] (C 7)
• "Listen, mademoiselle, you must not think that because we are the dolls that are bought and sold we have neither eyes nor ears." (C 7)
• "As disproportionately surprised and pleased as if he had picked up a sovereign in the streets of Aberdeen." (C 13)
• "The halcyon period between the self-tormenting exuberance of youth and the fretful carpe diem of approaching senility." (C 13)
• "As useful as a rain-coat under machine-gun fire." (C 13)
• "You don't want either to give or to take. You've tried being the giver, and you've found that the giver is always fooled. And you won't be the taker, because that's very difficult, and because you know that the taker always ends by hating the giver." (C 13)
• "We'll all be having a little white stone over us before long and it don't matter so much how or when." (C 15)
• "There is undoubtedly something irritating about the favourites of fortune." (C 17)
• "Therefore, by the second law of thermo-dynamics, which lays down that we are hourly and momently progressing to a state of more and more randomness, we receive positive assurance that we are moving happily and securely in the right direction." (C 22)
• "The Inspector grunted and tripped over a packing-case as they emerged into the purlieus of Wardour Street." (C 23)
• "As somebody says, 'the glitter is the gold.' That sounds like relativity physics, but it's psychological fact." (C 31)

June 2020

I have set myself the task of reading all the Lord Peter Wimsey novels (mostly again) in order. The ones I have read and reviewed in this blog so far include:
Whose Body in which my Lord and his manservant are introduced
Clouds of Witness in which Lord Peter must sleuth to get his brother Gerald, Duke of Denver, off a murder charge
Unnatural Death which introduces another Wimsey sidekick: Miss Climpson
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
Strong Poison which introduces Harriet Vane, a detective writer who becomes Lord Peter's love interest

The Five Red Herrings; Lord Peter in Scotland

Have His Carcase: Harriet and Peter investigate the death of a gigolo with dreams

There are also Wimsey books written since the death of DLS by Jill Paton Walsh. These include:

The Attenbury Emeralds in which Lord Peter, in 1951, recalls the circumstances of his first case, the Attenbury Emeralds, which have gone missing again.
The Late Scholar: in which Wimsey returns to Oxford