Absolute rubbish
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I quite like the Lord Peter Wimsey novels and my advice would be to stick to them and ignore the short stories collected here. It would perhaps be nice to be able to pick out one or two that were intriguing or amusing or in some other way worth reading, but they are all terrible. All, that is, except ' The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba'. That story is way beyond terrible: it is the most preposterous and ridiculous 35 pages that it has ever been my misfortune to read. Presumably Sayers wanted to write something in the line of Conan Doyle's 'His Last Bow', but the end result is like a poor Ian Fleming pastiche written by Jeffrey Archer on a bad day.
Avoid like the plague.
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A period piece but still great fun
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This was written in the days when detective fiction was about great and often eccentric characters and when intellectual and mind-boggling puzzles were the order, rather than lots of blood and gore - a bit like Agatha Christie. If you like that, then you'll love this collection of all the short stories featuring Sayers' eccentric aristocratic detective (way before boring old Linley!) Lord Peter Wimsey. Sayers herself was a serious intellectual, having translated Dante and worked on early christianity, but while there are the occasional touches of her erudition here, these are basically little gems of detection which feature real characters in a wonderfully glamorous 1930-40s setting. Possibly old-fashioned, but still hugely entertaining.
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