Lord Peter Wimsey and his valet Bunter are driving to visit friends in East Anglia when a snowstorm sends their car skidding into a ditch. This study guide references the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 1966 hardcover edition. As the book follows Wimsey in his attempts to solve the mystery of a murdered corpse buried in a churchyard, the novel examines the themes of the dangers of dredging up the past, the perils of sacrilege, and the difference between human law and divine justice. The story uses a limited third-person narrative technique from the viewpoint of Lord Peter Wimsey.
Except for a few scenes set in London, the rest of the novel takes place in the small village of Fenchurch St. The story unfolds between New Year’s Eve and the following Christmas season, although most of the action occurs around the two holidays a year apart. It is set during a contemporary period that would correspond to the early 1930s. The Nine Tailors falls into the mystery fiction category. Lastly, some of the character surnames in the novel come from the church graveyard near Sayer’s childhood home.
Likewise, her father restored the church bells in his parish, which inspired Sayers’s interest in the subject of change ringing. He was vicar of a town near the fens that Sayers uses as the setting for her story. Sayers’s father was a minister, as is one of the major characters in the novel. The Nine Tailors (1934) is Sayers’s ninth title in the Wimsey series and was inspired to a limited degree by her own life experience.
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