The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy Sayers

[lightreads]

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


On the surface, a pleasant puzzle-piecey little murder mystery, with Peter bounding here and there, declaiming and detectiving his way to an answer. But under that . . . yikes. What an uncomfortable book, with people turning and twisting and snagging on each other like brambles on silk. Everyone stuck inside a little box called marriage or poverty or shell shock or police rules. This book is all tight spaces – the badly lit veteran’s club, the body crammed up tight in the phone box, the stifling social scene. There’s something bitter and angry down deep here, something peculiarly postwar and female and stuck in a way I can’t put my finger more precisely on.



And then the little cut of the title, because of course we wouldn’t want anything unpleasant to happen, no no, particularly not to the soldiers who made it home alive, the lucky ones who are clearly and absolutely fine now.



Eek.





View all my reviews

Comments

[lightreads]

I have the Carmichael for some( which is . . . okay. very very british), and for others I have very old National Library Service for the Blind recordings with a different narrator. They are only slowly going up on the Library of Congress website, but they are amazing. They made the one with all the painters almost enjoyable.

[kate_nepveu]

Which is saying something!