Unnatural Death

A Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery, Book 3

By: Dorothy L. Sayers

Narrated by: Ian Carmichael

Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

The wealthy Agatha Dawson is dead and there are no apparent signs of foul play. Lord Peter Wimsey, however, senses that something is amiss and he refuses to let the case rest - even without any clues or leads. Suddenly, he is faced with another murder - Agatha's maid. Can super-sleuth Wimsey find the murderer and solve the case before he becomes the killer's next victim?

©1927, 1955 The Trustees of Anthony Fleming (deceased) (P)2012 AudioGO

A clever mystery with depth

In <strong>Unnatural Death</strong> by Dorothy L. Sayers, Lord Peter Wimsey finds the case of his dreams, the perfect crime. One night, he is dining out with his close friend, Charles Parker, an inspector from Scotland Yard, when the man at the table next to him overhears their discussion of the challenges to doctors when they suspect murder. The man, who turns out to be a doctor himself, recounts how he recently had a patient dying of cancer who passed away sooner than expected under the care of her nurse great--niece. An autopsy showed nothing and led to the community's ostracizing him. What should he have done when he suspected unnatural death but had no evidence?

Though the doctor has given little information about his life, even down to his name, Lord Peter is thoroughly enchanted at the conundrum of the unexplained death. Thus, he uses the knowledge he has in order to locate the town in Leehampton and puts his best operative on the case. Miss Climpson is one of the more than two million women who outnumber marriageable men, mostly due to the First World War, and Lord Peter has arranged to harness the gossip power and natural snooping of spinsters as inquiry agents. In doing so, he provides gainful employment for clever women and an effective means of gaining information for himself and the police. So Miss Climpson goes to the town of Mary Whittaker, where the latter inherited the property of her great-aunt, Agatha Dawson.

The investigation turns into a serious situation when more people get killed, leading Lord Peter to question the issue of his responsibility in the deaths. If he had not interfered, the murderer would likely never have struck again. So is Lord Peter ultimately responsible, at least in part, for the deaths, as a result of his poking his nose into the case? The book deals with this complex ethical issue in asking at what price justice ought to be pursued.

<strong>Unnatural Death</strong> has a strong plot that holds the reader fascinated throughout, using a clever premise and solution. The characters also delight and charm us, especially with the introduction of Miss Climpson. In creating this spinster, Sayers highlighted the problem of what were then known as "superfluous women." So many men were killed or too severely maimed for marriage during World War I that this created a drastic imbalance between women and men. Many women then were forced never to be able to marry, for lack of eligible men.

<strong>Unnatural Death</strong> demonstrates a knowledge of arcane medical and legal details in creating the method of murder, the false clues, and motive. Humorously to me, Wimsey comments that the murderer has been inspired by "an intensive study of Mr. Austin Freeman." Freeman may be called the first CSI, as he combined both legal issues and forensic issues in his character of Dr. Thorndyke. It seems evident that Sayers did her own research into medical and legal issues to create this well- written book.

The audio edition of the book is performed by Ian Carmichael, who sounds so effective in his roles as both narrator and character of Lord Peter. As the portrayer of Lord Peter on BBC television in the 1970s, Carmichael understands the true character of the sleuth and inserts that depth of knowledge into his performance, making it truly excellent.

In my opinion, <strong>Unnatural Death</strong> is one of the strongest of Sayers's novels, with plenty of research evident, as well as plenty of skill in writing. The characters seem very realistic, and the plot is very clever. I give this book five stars!

We need more of these

Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter mystery novels are at their most delightful when narrated by Ian Carmichael. Hoping that more of them are available on Audible soon!

Unnatural death

Great read. More fun than Agatha Christie Performance perfect. Enjoyed very much. Would read again.

Excellent story

Well presented by the wonderful Ian Carmichael. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. As always, Ms. Sayers’ cast of characters were very entertaining.

At last! Sayers read by Ian Charmichael

A Dorothy Sayers (unabridged) novel narrated by Ian Carmichael is a marriage made in heaven. Carmichael has narrated most of the Sayers Lord Peter novels and he is without rival for excellence in this genre. In this recording of Unnatural Death Sayers' complex and riveting story of clever deception and calculated murder is brought to its full dramatic heights by narrator Ian Carmichael.

Audible, PLEASE bring us more Sayers read by Carmichael!

Great Writer, Great Story, Great Narrator

What more could you want from an audiobook?

First, there's the multifaceted Dorothy Sayers: medieval scholar, poet, playwright, advertising copywriter (where she helped create the famous and still-used "Zoo" ads for Guinness), friend of people like C. S. Lewis and T. S. Eliot. She could pen Christian apologetics and scholarly essays, translate Dante, reproducing the original terza rima in fluent English, then turn around and create a character as flawed, funny, admirable and ultimately likable as Lord Peter Wimsey.

Then there is the story, full of people who act like people, with our hidden motives, self-deceptions, vanity, greed and occasional introspections. Because Sayers was a sincere and serious Christian her crime stories are set in the context of a definite moral universe. Because she was a great writer, the physical universe of the stories is just as complex and untidy as the one in which we find ourselves. An amazingly accomplished woman in her own right, she was by no means a standard-bearer for Feminism but rather an acute observer and critic of what that movement was bringing about in her own day. Thus reading or listening to her works can be a deeply illuminating counter-cultural experience.

Finally, there is Ian Carmichael. I first scraped acquaintance with Dorothy Sayers through the BBC productions of her mystery novels that starred Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey. As good as those productions were, hearing him read the story is, of course, even better. He doesn't just read, he acts, giving each character a voice so definite that it isn't hard to conjure up a mental image of the speaker. When reading the narration between the slabs of dialogue he seems to understand exactly what Sayers was driving at, injecting just the right touch of irony, sarcasm or humor.

If Carmichael performed any more of the Lord Peter mysteries, let's hope Audible can snag them and put them up for sale.

Ian Carmichael at his best.

lovely cozy with an ingenious crime. worth the read "don't you know" Wonderful indeed.

light & entertaining

Excellent narration - multiple people in a conversation are represented clearly. pre-Harriet Vane and little Bunter, but Parker and Our Hero make a good job of it.

Don’t judge Ms. Sayers too harshly, she’s a product of her time.

Its a terrible injustice (and lazy self righteousness), to judge someone from long ago who wasn’t afforded the knowledge and understanding we, in the ensuing decades, have thankfully been granted.

It’s much the same with fiction. We, by that I mean readers of detective fiction, have thousands of books that have been written since Ms. Sayers birthed Lord Peter and his entourage onto the page. We are familiar with the developments of this art form in print, and also on both the big and little screens, that the readers of the time were not.

So if things sometimes seem rather too obvious, or the actions of the protagonists frustratingly slow or obtuse, give a little grace to the dear lady and simply enjoy the fruits of her prodigious imagination.

Put plainly, give the old girl some slack and enjoy the dang stories. 😀

Great writing

I love finding these 100 yo novels. Great performance. Sayers is a genius. Loved Carmichael.