Unnatural Death, Dorothy L. Sayers
Featuring Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey, Peter Jones as Bunter, and Gabriel Woolf as Inspector Parker
This is a quick review, since I’ve read the book the Unnatural Death radio play was based on several times, and heard the radio play at least once before too. The casting is generally great: the voices are perfect for the characters, for the most part, though sometimes the dramatics are a bit too dramatic (the boy scout in episode… five or so comes to mind). Miss Climpson’s letters are narrated by the character, which seems fun at first (and gives you a wealth of information on the character’s attitudes, etc), but knowing the story as well as I do, I found it annoying over time.
The story itself is a pretty good mystery, satisfyingly tangled and yet with one of those surprisingly simple solutions. The original crime is simple and elegant: as Wimsey says, it’s everything the criminal does to hide the crime that actually ends up revealing them.
There’s an interesting review here on the race issues in this book. I’m not sure to what extent I agree with it, without knowing more about race issues in Britain in the period, but it is an interesting point to make.
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