Murder Must Advertise

It’s horribly hampering to one’s detective work when one isn’t supposed to be detecting, because one daren’t ask any questions, much. But if whoever it was knew I was detecting, then whatsoever questions I asked, I shouldn’t get any answers.

Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

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Murder Must Advertise was an absolute pleasure to read. I found it to be Lord Peter Wimsey at his absolute best in so many ways.

In order to investigate a murder, Wimsey is employed by the owner of an advertising firm and installed as a junior copywriter. While employed, he goes by his middle names, Death Bredon, perhaps one of my favorite details in the entire novel. He is supposed to find out what the “undesirable” activity in the office is which the dead man never actually named in a letter found in his trashcan, but never actually delivered to the boss. Wimsey can’t, of course, let on who he is or actually investigate overtly.

Like all rich men, he had never before paid any attention to advertisements.

 The explanations and copious, specific details of copywriting could be seen as a tiresome. However, the knowledge that this is a job Dorothy Sayers herself held (I learned this from an episode of the Shedunnit podcast) made it that much more fascinating. She has a knack for making the drudgery of a job sound interesting in places, while also conveying the pitfalls of office work and interdepartmental politics. And, as the majority of the book actually takes place in the office, we are lucky that Sayers depicts it all engagingly.

Wimsey employs one of the errand boys to dig up a little information for him. Wimsey’s interactions with children always remind me of Martha Grimes’ Richard Jury and the way he speaks to children. The errand boy proves invaluable and is an excellent minor sidekick, enlivening the story.

Since Wimsey can’t really investigate properly, he uses some subterfuge, but he also just walks into the job being nosy, wondering what happened to the man he replaced, and asking delicate questions in the name of curiosity and understanding the office. For the most part, he gets away with it, though in an office, people do talk, and he is, of course, eventually discovered. Wimsey is his most whimsical self (the slingshot on the rooftop comes to mind, as well as the cricket match) and it’s funny to read.

Sayers didn’t like Murder Must Advertise very much herself. She wrote it to fulfill her contract and didn’t feel that it was on par with her other books. I found it to be a charming Wimsey episode, however, and enjoyed reading it very much.

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