Whose Body?

Lord Peter Wimsey, the debonair aristocrat with a taste for the arcane, is summoned from his club when a corpse appears in a Mayfair bathtub, naked but for a pair of pincenez. Sir Reuben Levy, a respected architect, lies dead, and circumstantial evidence immediately points to a crime of passion. But as Wimsey digs deeper through London's shadowy corners and society's gilded parlors, he uncovers something far more sinister than a simple murder: a frame built on prejudice, with a Jewish man condemned before a single fact emerges. Sayers constructs a marvelously intricate puzzle, a locked-room mystery that unfolds through witty dialogue, erudite allusion, and the peculiar pleasure of watching an aristocratic eccentric deploy his peculiar gifts. The novel established the template for the interwar mystery: cleverness as both game and moral compass. For readers who adore Golden Age wit, unconventional detectives, and fiction that still bites a century later.