It feels a little unpolished, with serrated edges here and there without the Agatha Christie flair, but I suppose that's to be expected with a debut. It is still a shrewdly conceived plot nevertheless, though the conclusion might easily be surmised early (*potential spoiler) on if you pay close attention to what Sayer's has to leave out about the body's appearance (due to censorship), which indefinitely connects the two cases. I had a rough time getting used to Sayer's attempts at Wodehousian dialogue and her brusque descriptions, and I could not help wincing every time the Peter/Bunter duo fell short of the inimitable Jeeves and Wooster. All in all, an average feat by Miss Sayers. ( )

I really didn't care for the book. Lord Peter is an aristocrat who dabbles in mysteries in order to pass the time. The story lost my interest after the first chapter. There was too much superficial "witty" dialogue and not enough character development. ( )

A dead body shows up in a person’s bathtub, it just so happens that that person has connections including to a second son of a duke that has time on his hands and has taken up sleuthing as a hobby. Whose Body? is the first book of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsy series in which the titular character investigates the mysterious body and later a mysterious disappearance as well.

This was a very engaging mystery from the start especially since Sayers close to the beginning either provides information that someone is either a massive red herring or the obvious culprit, but the astute reader to realizes this feels the need keep going to find out which. The main character, Lord Peter Wimsy, is overall a good protagonist to follow and has some very well characterized supporting characters in his butler Bunter and police detective Charles Parker that help to spread the narrative. While there are some characteristics of Lord Peter that I personally is his speech patterns of the stereotypical snotty Englishman especially when talking with other snotty noblemen of his same age, however I like that Sayers in making him a veteran of the Great War—as it was then known—that suffered recurrent bouts of shell shock—a.k.a. PTSD—which over a century later connects this fictional character to our world today. Frankly, the mystery was good, the main character was good, and Sayers writing was good not only making me enjoy this book but also to look out for more Lord Peter books.

Whose Body? is an interesting mystery with a good main character and engaging writing by Dorothy L. Sayers that got me hooked into seeing what future adventures Lord Peter Wimsy has. ( )

Entertaining but far-fetched story has way too much talk. It's a good thing Sayers knows how to make that talk rather interesting and informative, but the crime at the center of the novel is made unnecessarily complicated, and it is that unnecessary complication that leads to the criminal's undoing. The character of Lord Peter Wimsey is interesting enough, especially his post-WW 1 shell shock. But I'm not sure this is a series that would interest me that much going forward. ( )

Crime