Since beginning this blog, I have already twice written about Dorothy Sayers. Well, a woman as prolific and talented and varied in her writing as Sayers tends to come up a lot in my reading.
I have read not quite all of the lord Peter Whimsey mysteries, but enough to say I know her detective fiction. This novel, The Documents in the Case, is one I never got around to. I think I bought it in Russia (there's an electronic tag in the back of the book that was in all of the books I bought there). My husband actually picked this book up the other day and, after quickly finishing it, recommended it to me.
This book is epistolary. And as a whole, I find the idea of epistolary novels better than the actual practice of them. Jane Austen famous started books like First Impressions off as a series of letters. Returning to the work as a more mature writer, she found the limitations of this form prevented her from writing the plot she wanted to write. She abandoned the format and gave us Pride and Prejudice.
And yet, for this book, it works. It works a little too well. Phil said he felt kind of slimy reading the first few chapters. The psychology of these characters is hardly something you want to delve too deeply into.
The story unfolds, and it becomes quite clear who the murder has to be. The real mystery is the method. This is where apparently Dorothy Sayers received the help of another author, Robert Eustace. He was another mystery writer of the time, specifically known for his scientific innovation. And if this mystery is any indication of the kind of science he used in his books, our current C.S.I dramas are dumbing down the science for us. One of the reviews I read on Goodreads stated that this books was used in a chemistry textbook.
But in the hands of Sayers, this dealing of chemistry and psychology to solve the murder of a man becomes about the greater mystery of "What is life?" In a scene that Father Brown would have been proud of, a group of learned scientist sit in a room discussing current innovations and discoveries in science. The local parson bemusedly points out that "we" (the church) have been telling you that for thousands of years".
Sayers wrote during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. She was contemporary with Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, and Dashiell Hammett. And while her name isn't as known as those writers, she is still considered one of the "Queens of Crime" for good reason. But it is her ability to seamlessly weave issues of metaphysics, theology, and natural science into the solution of her clever little mysteries that, for me, places her apart from the other writers of the time. A mystery is usually good to read once. If you remember the solution, rereading isn't the same experience. But books like The Documents in the Case beg to be reread. Because, sure, I remember who the murder was. But what was that point about thermodynamics and how it relates to the Fall of Man again?
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