Whose Body? a Lord Peter Wimsey Novel
1923
Dorothy L. Sayers introduced one of detective fiction's most enduring figures in this 1923 debut: Lord Peter Wimsey, an aristocratic amateur sleuth whose air of idle foppishness conceals a razor-sharp mind. When a naked corpse turns up in the bathtub of a respectable London architect, Wimsey's mother calls him in to look at the mess, and from that absurdist beginning, a masterpiece of Golden Age detection unfolds. The body belongs to a well-known financier, found without identification, without a clear motive, without anything but the grotesque circumstances of its discovery. Wimsey must navigate a web of the victim's associates, each with secrets worth killing for, as Sayers serves up one of the most cleverly constructed puzzles in the genre. Beneath the wit and social comedy lies something darker: a murder built on greed, deception, and the desperate calculations of ordinary people driven to extraordinary acts. It established the template for literate, witty British mystery that Sayers would perfect over a dozen novels.
