Have His Carcase (Eagle Large Print) [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Dorothy L. Sayers (Author)

Book Description

Series: Eagle Large Print | Publication Date: July 1993

A young woman falls asleep on a deserted beach and wakes to discover the body of a man whose throat has been slashed from ear to ear...The young woman is the celebrated detective novelist Harriet Vane, once again drawn against her will into a murder investigation in which she herself could be a suspect. Lord Peter Wimsey is only too eager to help her clear her name.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'She brought to the detective novel originality, intelligence, energy and wit.' - P. D. James 'I admire her novels ... she has great fertility of invention, ingenuity and a wonderful eye for detail.' - Ruth Rendell 'She combined literary prose with powerful suspense, and it takes a rare talent to achieve that. A truly great storyteller.' Minette Walters --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Dorothy L Sayers was born in Oxford in 1893, and was both a classical scholar and a graduate in modern languages. As well as her popular Lord Peter Wimsey series, she wrote several religious plays, but considered her translations of Dante's Divina Commedia to be her best work. She died in 1957. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 680 pages
• Publisher: Eagle Large Print, (July 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792715896
• ISBN-13: 978-0792715894
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,039,319 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Whimsical Seaside Mystery, February 6, 2004

By 

C. T. Mikesell (near Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Have His Carcase (Mass Market Paperback)

The second of Sayers' Wimsey/Vane mysteries, "Have His Carcase" never quite gripped me the way "Strong Poison" did. The earlier mystery placed Harriet Vane in jeopardy should Lord Peter prove unable to exonerate her. In this book there is no such risk-factor, consequently the story is little more than a mental exercise regimen for two not-so-old, not-so-dear friends (although they do get quite a bit better acquainted on this outing). The book is also a few chapters too long (or short, depending on your point of view); "the evidence of the mannequin," for instance, made only a minor contribution to the denouement and could have been eliminated - or it could have been better capitalized upon and drawn in several of the women characters as suspects. The murder plot is definitely overcomplicated and would likely never occur in real life ... unless you wanted to commit a murder that would baffle the police and almost thwart Wimsey and Vane as well (in which case it's *exactly* what you'd do).

For its several shortcomings, "Carcase" is still a very enjoyable read. The verbal sparring between Wimsey and Vane is priceless. Vane's perspective as a mystery novelist adds a bit of behind-the-scenes color. The local police force occasionally comes off a bit too indulgent of the amateur investigators, but it was very nice that they were portrayed as neither blustering know-it-alls nor no-nothing bumpkins. Bunter's quest through London involves some of the best written pacing I've ever read.

A couple final points: The word "carcase" in the title would nowadays be written as "carcass." Before reading the book I thought it had something to do with those large trunks that used to get strapped onto the back of cars. The title actually refers to the fact that before a murder investigation can go forward, the police need to have the body (or its remains) at hand. Point two: Don't read "the evidence of the cipher" (Chapter 28) when you are tired; while it provides a very good look at a cryptographer's work, it carries with it the potential risk of causing your head to explode. Be careful, you really wouldn't want that to happen. Trust me.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The feisty Harriet and the monocled Lord Peter Wimsey., October 3, 2001

By 

John Austin "[e-mail]" (Kangaroo Ground, Australia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Have His Carcase (Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery, 8) (Audio Cassette)

Dorothy L Sayers provided some of the great treasures to be found in the so-called "Golden Age of Detective Fiction". A classical scholar with a formidable intellect, she was an eminent practitioner and an eloquent critic of detective fiction. Her feisty, detective fiction writing character, Harriet Vane, and her aristocratic, monocled, amateur detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, may be found together for the second time in her 1932 novel "Have His Carcase".

On a walking holiday, while recovering from a court case in which she was alleged to have killed her lover, Harriet Vane discovers the body of a man. It is lying on rocks on a beach, close to low tide level. The evidence suggests suicide. After taking photographs with her camera, finding a cut throat razor and removing a shoe from the corpse, Harriet vainly tries to enlist help in moving the body before it is washed away by the incoming tide. The local police force is alerted and so is Lord Peter Wimsey.

This is a long novel. Interest focuses not only on the solution to the mystery but also on the likelihood of Wimsey succeeding with his wish to marry Harriet. There is witty dialogue, there are fulsome reports from a range of eccentric characters, there are descriptions of the human anatomy and how it responds to the throat being cut, there is an interminable attempt to decode a ciphered letter, and there are classical quotations provided at the start of each chapter. There is little dramatic tension, no suspense, and no thrills. Dorothy L Sayers was a cultivated, fluent writer, sometimes boring but never banal.

If your tolerance of boredom is low, but your credit balance at the bank is high, then invest in the audio tape reading of the book provided by Ian Carmichael. English actor Ian Carmichael has had great success associated with various adaptations of the novels of Dorothy L Sayers. He brings wonderful energy and gusto to this full-length reading, enough to keep you delighted for more than fifteen hours.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Classic in Cryptology, October 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Have His Carcase (Mass Market Paperback)

I recommend this book primarily because it contains Lord Wimsey and Harriet's solution of a Playfair cipher.

Most readers will recall Sherlock Holmes' solution of the Dancing Men cipher (recounted in Conan Doyle's The Adventure of the Dancing Men) and Legrand's solution of Captain Kidd's cipher (recounted in Poe's The Gold Bug). Both of these are simple substitution ciphers, easily broken if one knows certain facts about the English language, such as the order of letter frequency (E, T, O, A, N . . .) The Playfair cipher, on the other hand, is an order of magnitude more difficult to solve. It is a digram cipher, using pairs of letters (there are 26x26=676 possible digrams) instead of individual letters to encrypt the message. Tables of digram frequencies are of little use in decrypting short messages. Other methods are required. The mechanics are explained in the text.

The Playfair cipher was used operationally in WWII and to this day remains unsolvable as a one-time, short message, unknown-keyword cipher, unless you can guess one of the plaintext words. Wimsey and Harriet were lucky that they were dealing with an amateur.

Sayer's audacious trump of Conan Doyle and Poe caught my attention. The rest of the book is, to put it mildly, well-plotted. There is evidence here that native British intelligence far exceeds what one finds in the colonies. No wonder Sayers is so popular.