The Nine Tailors cover art

The Nine Tailors

Lord Peter Wimsey, Book 11

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The Nine Tailors

By: Dorothy L. Sayers
Narrated by: Jane McDowell
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About this listen

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. The 11th book featuring Lord Peter, set in a country church, is often named as the best detective story ever written.

When his sexton finds a corpse in the wrong grave, the rector of Fenchurch St Paul asks Lord Peter Wimsey to find out who the dead man was and how he came to be there.

The lore of bell ringing and a brilliantly evoked village in the remote fens of East Anglia are the unforgettable background to a story of an old unsolved crime and its violent unravelling 20 years later.

©1934 The Trustees of anthony Fleming (deceased) (P)2015 Hodder & Stoughton Crime Fiction Detective Mystery Traditional Detectives Fiction Crime

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Critic reviews

"I admire her novels...she has great fertility of invention, ingenuity and a wonderful eye for detail." (Ruth Rendell)
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Very well read by Jane McDowell. A difficult audio ‘read’ as there are many complex annotations of bell ringing, but a good whodunnit that captures a period between the wars very well.
Got a bit lost in parts, felt it was the sort of book I needed to refer back to earlier parts, but stuck with it to the grand conclusion at the end. A good read.

Extraordinary book

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The book was OK knowing the area the book was set in I would struggle to identify it. The thing that annoyed me was the narrator, the accents were more West Country or Norfolk. When she used real town names she pronounced them wrong. Little things maybe but it annoyed me. If you are going to narrate a book look into the area first.

Story took ages to get going to many muddled up characters.

Some events did not make sense.

I actually believe one of the characters the author based on herself.

The author being the real life daughter of the vicar of the few church where this was set, certainly knew the church and the area.

I was glad i finished it, i suspect in this case reading the physical book would be better

the narrator let's it down

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this is my favourite Dorothy l Sayers book. they reviews which talk about the woeful narration are wrong. the narration was very good and the story puts Sayers right at the top of crime fiction.

Great Story...great narration

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This book didn't need to be as long as it is. In fact an awful lot of needless, boring, unintelligible information about bell ringing could have been cut. That would have made the story move along without the really annoying quotes etc at the beginning of every chapter. Perhaps all the names of the bells, the bell ringers, their tone, order, sound etc would be interesting to bell ringers, but to us mere mortals it is like listening to parts of the book in a foreign language.
Not the "best story ever" that I was expecting or that was advertised.

Didn't need to be so long

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As a change ringer, I always enjoy reading this book. a few mistakes with pronunciation: Caius college is pronounced Keys. The reading lout of the changes is a bit odd: that could be done with handbells.

Never loses its freshness in the retelling

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