#whose body?

[talkingpiffle]

Sayers reference in Wake Up Dead Man!

[taciturn-nerd]

If Sir Reuben has been murdered, is it a game? and is it fair to treat it as a game?"

"That's what I'm ashamed of, really," said Lord Peter. "It is a game to me, to begin with, and I go on cheerfully, and then I suddenly see that somebody is going to be hurt, and I want to get out of it."

"Yes, yes, I know." said the detective, "but that's because you're thinking about your attitude. You want to be consistent, you want to look pretty, you want to swagger debonairly through a comedy of puppets or else to stalk magnificently through a tragedy of human sorrows and things. But that's childish. If you've any duty to society in the way of finding out the truth about murders, you must do it in any attitude that comes handy. You want to be elegant and detached? That's all right, if you find the truth out that way, but it hasn't any value in itself, you know. You want to look dignified and consistent - what's that got to do with it? You want to hunt down a murderer for the sport of the thing and then shake hands with him and say, "Well played - hard luck - you shall have your revenge tomorrow!' Well, you can't do it like that. Life's not a football match. You want to be a sportsman. You can't be a sportsman. You're a responsible person.

[no-where-new-hero]

“Oh, damn!” said Lord Peter Wimsey at Piccadilly Circus. “Hi, driver!”

The first line of Whose Body?

Quite suddenly, he said, "Oh, damn!" and began to cry—in an awkward, unpractised way at first, and then more easily. So she held him, crouched at her knees, against her breast, huddling his head in her arms that he might not hear eight o'clock strike.

The final paragraph of Busman's Honeymoon

To have Peter's first and last lines of the series be the same, with such a span of difference in the tone, the situation, the sincerity of the oath that can only be understood in the way he's changed over the books––I again want to scream about how perfect and incredible and amazingly artistic Dorothy Leigh Sayers is oh my god

[secretlyafiveheadeddragon]

Dorothy l sayers: what shall I name the murderer in my first mystery novel? It’s gotta be subtle, wouldn’t want to give it away.

also Dorothy l sayers: I’ll call him Dr. Freak

[oldshrewsburyian]

Hello - I am not sure if this is the appropriate forum to voice this, but I know you talk a lot about Dorothy l Sayers, and I think a lot of other fans follow you.

I recently read Whose Body? at least partially on the basis of hearing a lot of Dorothy l Sayers fans on tumblr praise it as a moving account of a World War I veteran with shell shock. This was the overwhelming impression of the book I got from the internet. But actually reading it I was pretty shocked and upset to realise it is centred around an extremely violent antisemitic hate crime, including a graphic description of medical students dissecting a Jewish man’s body whilst calling him antisemitic slurs. I was probably particularly affected because Reuben Levy and his family reminded me a lot of my own.

I don’t want to come across as accusing Dorothy l Sayers of approving of the antisemitism she writes about, reading up on her biography she clearly had a very complicated relationship towards Jews in general. And I also don’t want to scold fans for enjoying the book - I actually did find it a very interesting piece of writing, including its depiction of 1920s antisemitism. 

But I am quite surprised that in my years of skulking in Sayers fandom I hadn’t heard discussion of its subject matter, or any attempts to warn people about the content of the book, with instead most focusing on Peter Wimsey’s personal pain and how witty Sayer’s jokes are. I feel like maybe the Jewish victims could be centred a bit more in fandom discussion, and perhaps some content warnings could be given out a bit more liberally?

I really hope this message doesn’t come across as rude or aggressive, to be honest I am still writing a bit from a place of emotion, so if it is out of bounds please feel free to ignore.

Hello! I'm sorry you had an upsetting experience reading the book. And I certainly don't think that saying so could be in any way "out of bounds." I'm not sure you'll find in me what you want, though; I can offer sympathy, but I'm not an arbiter elegantiarum, or any other kind of arbiter. I am also very surprised, frankly, that you haven't come across more discussion of the Levys and of the philo- and antisemitism of Sayers' Wimsey novels (yes, both.) It's in one book recommendation here. It's in some FB discussions. I think some fic authors have done an interesting job of expanding, revising, and reflecting on the place of Mr. and Mrs. Levy in the books, and the character of Rachel Levy Arbuthnot.

But this may be partly a matter of perspective. It's the kind of discussion that is more likely to take place in academic circles than fandom ones, I think. Moreover, people who enjoy detective novels from the 1920s and 1930s are likely to assume that others interested in them will be primarily interested in the detective and in the historical setting... which includes violence and prejudice, often in horrifying ways. I don't know if the fact that the identity of the victim in Whose Body? is a spoiler makes you feel that the typical lack of detail in recommendations is understandable, or wrong-headed, or if you view that as a fact totally extraneous to the kind of advisory you wish you had seen.

I hope that, in trying to provide context and additional perspective, I don't seem dismissive. I'm sure you'll find additional people interested in discussing the Levys and interwar antisemitism, if that's a contribution you'd like to make, or a discussion you'd like to start. I think that the ways the Levys make visible the tensions around Jewish identity in upper-class English society between the wars are both interesting and poignant. And I would maintain that part of the point of the book is that the antisemitism is the horror at the dark heart of motive. None of that, of course, makes the antisemitism less disturbing.

[greenandhazy]

Okay as a certified murder mystery fan, I have some commentary on the books that get a shout-out in Wake Up Dead Man.

One thing I find particularly interesting across the board is that Benoit Blanc calls all of these stories "locked room mysteries" which... is patently false. Only Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Hollow Man are true locked room mysteries, as in the murder took place in a room where it is seemingly impossible for the murderer to either have entered or left undetected. Whose Body? features a body found in a bathroom and there is some question over how it got there, but it's accepted pretty early on that it was probably carried through a window. Both of the Christie novels make it very clear that it would be easy for the murderer(s) to have snuck up on the victims and left unobtrusively.

And to be clear, I don't think this is an error! Christie had a few other genuine locked room mysteries that Rian Johnson could have picked from. I think he highlighted The Hollow Man and Murders in the Rue Morgue for their literary significance, and chose the other three because their plots inspired the movie in other ways, and Benoit Blanc's misstatement was a little misdirect/easter egg for the viewers.

Spoilers for all of them and the movie below.

NOTE: I am going to analyze The Murder of Roger Ackroyd last and leave some spaces between the others and that book. I highly recommend you read that yourself before reading this commentary, because it is an absolute CLASSIC of the genre and reading it without spoilers is just a delightful experience.

As for the others, The Murder at the Vicarage and Whose Body? are both very good, but not quite as foundational. The Hollow Man is great reading for its characters, atmosphere, and literary significance but imo the solution doesn't have as much of a "wow" factor as any of the others. The Murders in the Rue Morgue is actually just a short story, so you should also go read that just cuz.

Going in chronological order, except for Roger Ackroyd--

The Murders in the Rue Morgue is widely considered to be the first detective story, i.e. the first mystery story in which a central character uses reasoning and logic to solve the puzzle. (The word "detective" did not actually exist when Poe wrote this story.) This is probably the main/only reason that it is referenced in the movie; at least, there are not nearly as many plot references as the others. The solution to the locked room in this story is that a window is seemingly locked with a nail, but the nail is actually broken in two pieces so the window can be easily opened.

The other noteworthy thing about this story, for those who haven't read it, is... the murder is an orangutan. Yes, really. An orangutan watches its owner shaving and occasionally mimics the action (something orangutans are frequently known to do in captivity), then escapes, tries to "shave" one of the victims, and kills her and her daughter when she freaks out. Poe was probably inspired by early debates about evolution and the relationship between humans and great apes.

Moving on, Whose Body? is a great book to consider in relation to this movie. For one thing, it was Dorothy L. Sayers's first novel and introduced her main detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, who may very well have been one of the models for aspects of Benoit Blanc. He is a British peer who has some very dandy-ish habits reflected in his speech patterns, clothes, and his collection of expensive wine and rare books, while ultimately being very kind at heart. Some similarities to Holmes and Poirot as well, of course, but I do think Wimsey's Vibes are closest to Blanc’s, personally.

In terms of the plot, the reason for the title is that a body is found and the identity is initially not known--as a matter of fact, the identity is never really determined. It is eventually revealed that the dead man is a pauper, whose body was donated to a local teaching hospital. A doctor at the teaching hospital noted a resemblance between the pauper and a financier he had a grudge against, so he murdered the financier and swapped the bodies, dressing up the pauper's body to vaguely look like the financier's and leaving it in a nearby flat more or less to distract the police, while the financier's body was quickly dissected and disposed of.

So the body swapping is an obvious parallel to Samson and Wicks, although in that case only one of the "bodies" was dead during the swap. We also have a doctor for a killer, and both Blanc and Wimsey actually allow the ultimate murderer to commit suicide rather than go to prison (not that Blanc has much of a choice.) The body is also found in a bath.

Next is Murder at the Vicarage. This is a good one. I think this book was chosen because, as far as I can recall, it's the book wherein Christie deals with religious figures the most (although in her case it's the Anglican Church, not the Catholic Church). The book is narrated by Reverend Leonard Clement, who is a kindly figure, and, like Jud, he is the first to find the body--in this case, a widely-disliked magistrate who has been shot in the reverend's own study. There is also a moment where another curate in the parish is (wrongly) suspected of the murder and even appears to have made a confession.

However, it is ultimately discovered that the murder was the work of multiple people. The magistrate's wife, who has become resentful in her marriage, and her lover. The victim, like a lot of Christie victims, is also universally loathed particularly for wielding his power as an older male authority figure and a tyrant, so there's that.

Then The Hollow Man. The detective of this story, Dr. Gideon Fell, literally stops the plot for a considerable chunk of time and says "we're in a detective story, so let's talk about how locked rooms work in detective stories." The gist of the lecture is here; you will notice that the movie truncates/moves around some of these explanations but I think that's mostly for dramatic effect. (Amusingly, I did note that Carr via Fell mentions at least three tricks that Sayers and Christie would use later, so while he was giving away the tricks of the trade, I guess they didn't mind that much.)

But even outside the lecture, this book shares some other common themes with Wake Up Dead Man! In fact, its alternate title is The Three Coffins, because climbing out of coffins is a THING in this book. The plot is that, a few decades in the past, three brothers/bank thieves escaped from a Romanian prison by faking their deaths by plague. One of the brothers escaped as planned, but rather than dig out the remaining two, he just left to recover their stolen bounty himself; one of the brothers died, and the other later escaped and has come back for revenge.

Breaking out of a tomb is already a great parallel, and then I believe the bank theft is also stated to involve some jewels as well as cash? So we might also have that going for us. The solution to the locked room is kind of convoluted, and it ends up being that the brothers end up killing each other (plus some time and visual trickery).

I will note that the inclusion of this book did make me lowkey expect a "Samson is Wicks's brother!" twist, so I misinterpreted the significance of their physical similarity, but I'm not sure if that was intentional.

And then!! The Murder of Roger Ackroyd!

This book also has the potential to mislead viewers, but I am actually 100% sure it was meant to be an intentional red herring! In this novel, a prominent local leader in the village is stabbed in his study, and it's unclear how or when. The POV character, Dr. Sheppard, has dinner with him and talks with him in his study, is told that Ackroyd may be about to learn the identity of a blackmailer, but then is asked to leave, and receives a call later that night to say that Ackroyd has been murdered. No one in the house made the call, and they have to break down the door to find him stabbed. Eventually Hercule Poirot is brought in to solve the case.

The big twist of the book is that the murderer is Dr. Sheppard, the narrator, which I believe is meant to serve as a red herring for that little halfway not-twist where Benoit Blanc realizes Jud left something out and you almost think it was the murder.

(Side note: that totally reminded me of the not-twist in the first movie, when you think "oh, this is a reverse whodunnit! Marta did it, and the mystery is how she'll get away with it/get caught" before realizing it is a straightforward whodunnit after all, and also the actual twist in Glass Onion when you learn Andy is Helen. Rian Johnson is really good at these.)

There is even a point in the novel where Dr. Sheppard says "See how I skipped over from this moment to that moment? I didn't lie, but I didn't draw attention to the gap and what I was doing in that moment," which is exactly how Blanc and Jud discuss the moment of him hiding the flask.

Like Whose Body?, this is also another example of a doctor being a murderer and a murderer being allowed to commit suicide.

[five-heads-reading-books]

Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers

Date Published: 1923

Nationality of author: British, White

Category: Fiction

Genre: Mystery

Date finished: April 2026

Rating: EOTUTNOETFN

Interesting topics: Dorothy Sayer's life, the history of the Golden Age of detective literature, and intersectionality between gender and ethnicity. The book was quite Anti-Semetic at times, especially at the beginning, but ultimately the murdered man (who was Jewish) is depicted as a good husband and a sympathetic person. Ultimately, I feel unqualified to comment too much on the complexities of this issue as I do not have enough knowledge on the matter, but I didn't want to leave it unsaid as many reviews I'm looking at seem to.

Notes: This book was FANTASTIC. The mystery, plot, prose, and intrigue were a fine-tuned symphony, but the star of the show was the CHARACTERS. Every single one, no matter how small, or how many scenes they were in, felt so alive I could practically hear them breathe off the page. I found this a sharp contrast to the other Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, who typically used very simple characters but made the mystery airtight. Sayers might take a few liberties with her mysteries, but her character work is impeccable. The murderer was plotting and conniving, but grounded in reality. Bunter (my beloved), the loyal butler was delightful in every scene and kind of stole the show. I love him dearly. And the whole book is built nicely upon the detective, a man as charming and delightful as his name.

Lord Peter Wimsey is such a wonderful character, and a wonderful person. His quirks and eccentricities are paired with a sharp intellect and easygoing humility, all masked nicely with confidence and charm. He was an unusual kind of detective, an amateur who has lots of other hobbies and a whole life outside of this work. I'm used to Sherlock Holmeses who become so entrenched in their cases that they lose themselves in them. They forget niceties and politeness in pursuit of an ultimate goal. Wimsey is not like that. He lies somewhere between Poirot and Miss Marple, being a lover of the finer things in life, getting out on the ground and investigating the scenes personally, and using human psychology and forensic evidence in equal measure in his analysis. I'm in a class about detective literature right now, and he's definitely the hardest detective to categorize into a neat little archetype imo. I cannot wait to read more from him.

The book almost felt like a detective story about detective stories. It was very meta at times. The part about assembling clues into a complete case being like looking at a word scramble was so interesting! Another very interesting thing was the commentary of the ways murderers can reveal themselves, and how either an abundance of caution, fear, or arrogance causes them to make misjudgments that ultimately give away their game. I highly recommend this book if you love detective stories as much as I do.

Minor spoilers for Whose Body? and a pretty big but well known spoiler for the rest of the LPW and Harriet Vane mysteries!

Okay so apparently Wimsey goes on to marry Harriet Vane (DLS's other biggest detective) and they solve mysteries together? And in the essay Feminist Crime Fiction and Female Sleuths by Adrienne E. Gavin she says: "Vane refuses Wimsey's marriage proposals until Gaudy Night (1935), which has been termed 'the first feminist detective novel.'" I LIKE FEMINISM! I LIKE DETECTIVE NOVELS!

Anyway, this book was very good and I fear a hyper fixation is brewing with the potential of become a full blown special interest.

Also, this book has some moments that can be attributed as gay. This is my favorite. The context: Bunter is writing Wimsey a letter after he did some espionage.

...May I take this opportunity of expressing my grateful appreciation of your lordship’s excellent taste in food, drink and dress? It is, if I may say so, more than a pleasure—it is an education, to valet and buttle your lordship. Lord Peter bowed his head gravely. “What on earth are you doing, Peter, sittin’ there noddin’ an’ grinnin’ like a what-you-may-call-it?” demanded the Duke, coming suddenly out of a snooze. “Someone writin’ pretty things to you, what?” “Charming things,” said Lord Peter. The Duke eyed him doubtfully. “Hope to goodness you don’t go and marry a chorus beauty,” he muttered inwardly, and returned to the Times.

I mean. There's definitely some potential there. And he was his butler. OMG he was his butler!

Anyway. Good book. Highly recommend. I have the next one on hold at the library and I am having a very hard time waiting.

[wellntruly]

Mysteries friends alert, I have finally read my first Dorothy Sayers, also her first Lord Peter Whimsey novel, Whose Body? Forgive this weird way of photographing it but the cover design of my copy is so subpar.

In brief: Lord Peter is a 1920s English aristocrat of the Bertie Wooster type, and is genuinely silly but also silly with a purpose, when it suits his amateur detective work to engage in some Columbo-style obfuscation of how with it he actually is. And, importantly, Jeeves is still there. 

I was enjoying it, if not exactly snarfling it up, until I hit the First World War PTSD episode, and learned Peter’s worldly valet Mervyn Bunter was his sergeant in the war, and then I was 👀👌🏻💯🪖🔥 on board. 

I don’t know if I knew Sayers was contemporary to the interwar period she was writing in, I think I had the idea she was writing in the 50s and 60s and setting her books a few decades past. It means this is more of a time capsule than I expected, of tastes and ideas and social mores, though with Sayers and her protagonists certainly on the cool, bohemian side of history, in their encounters with those who are not bohemian nor cool at all.

Anyway, more Whimsey reads to come? Likely.