Book review: The Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers

The tenth book I read in 2015 is The Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers.  I first read the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries last year, beginning with the Harriet Vane installments and then returning to the beginning to fill in around her.  This is the sixth of the Wimsey novels, with a handful of short stories scattered along the timeline.

If you're not going to compare Sidney Chambers to Father Brown, the other obvious comparison is to Lord Peter, whose personal and working relationship to Charles Parker is echoed in Sidney's friendship with Geordie Keating.  Sadly, here as well Sidney suffers by the comparison, in that the characters are so much flatter and less vibrant than Sayers's creations.  Sidney and Inspector Keating are friends because ... Sidney preached the funeral for Keating's predecessor in his post and they both like drinking and backgammon?  Well, really, because every amateur detective needs a professional counterpart to step in and apply the cuffs after the summation.

There's very little Parker in this installment, however, as Lord Peter is on vacation in Scotland when someone drops dead of less than natural causes.  He does handle things when a suspect turns up in London, but for the most part, Lord Peter is dealing with local authorities.  The dialect is a little difficult -- after reading it in context repeatedly, I still have no idea what "Ay, imph'm" is supposed to signify -- but not impenetrable.  The 'red herrings' of the title are five of the six suspects who all had motive, means, and opportunity to kill a most unpopular local resident.