Book Review: Unnatural Death

Title: Unnatural Death (U.S. edition), The Dawson Pedigree (U.K. edition)

Author: Dorothy L. Sayers

Publishers: Harper & Row *(1927), Avon (1955)

Dates: 1927 (first edition), 1955 (paperback)

Length :225 pages

Illustrations: none

Quote: “But choose somebody old and ill, in circumstances where the benefit to yourself isn’t too apparent, and use a sensible method that looks like natural death or accident...and you’re safe.”

A serious scholar and Christian thinker, Dorothy L. Sayers wanted to be remembered for her translation of Dante's Divina Commedia and for The Mind of the Makeri, or at least for her dramatic representations of events in church history. Insead, she's remembered for a series of "whimsical" murder mysteries featuring a detective called Wimsey, a young veteran who solves mysteries to fend off what we might call PTSD. The detective stories are generally recognized as some of the best written in English, but Sayers rated them mere potboilers, of no more value than the ad slogans she had written when even younger and poorer. Should we pity her> The world now remembers her primrily fr those detective stories.

What people love about her detective stories is that Sayers wrote them with concern for social issues and compassion for the individual souls her characters would have had if they'd been real. The stories were not written to a formula; they vary in length, and each has its own tone and structure. Unnatural Death may, perhaps, be taken as representative, though it's less memorable than The Nine Tailors, less perplexing than The Five Red Herrings, and less rich than Gaudy Nighti.

Unnatural Death is a period piece, full of 1930s slang and atmosphere. At the same time, it anticipates current social problems. A respetable novel of this period wouldn't use the word "lesbian," but a major character in this novel is a lesbian. Wimsey and his sidekick Bunter are Army buddies; their then-fashionable foppish mannerisms may raise some people's hopes, but they marry women., eventually  Still, this novel is less about the peculiar social position of same-sex couples--they were perfectly respectable as long as they seemed to share the consensus opinion that no sane person could be physically attracted to a person of the same sex--is a minor concern in this novel. There's a look at race relations, too, and at the English feudal-hierarchical system. Sayers never missed.a chance to mention that, despite his education in a Christian school system, Wimsey is not really a Christian; he could benefit rom the consolation of religious faith, but he never has any faith. The primary focus of its attention is why even burdensome geriatric patients who will never be missed should not be euthanized, no matter how much their heirs may need the money.

Then there's the other distinguishing feature of Sayers' detective stories: the mystery can be solved if you happen to remember the right item of general knowledge. Your feelings about the characters won't help you solve the mystery along with Wimsey. Scientific facts will. Likable people can be guilty; repulsive people, even if guilty of other things, can be innocent of the murder. Sayers was a Christian, and some characters in each of her novels are also Christians, but the novels are not Sunday School books; everyone, including irreligious Wimsey, can quote Christian poems and songs but nobody ever gets into a full-length exposition of the gospel, and people's religious faith does not help identify whether charcters are nnocent, guilty, or going to be the Next Victim.

My copies of Sayers' detective stories are all older than I am, but the Wimsey stories have been reprinted every few years. They're worth it.