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Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club: A Peter Wimsey Mystery    by Dorothy L. Sayers Amazon.com order for
Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
by Dorothy L. Sayers
Order:  USA  Can
HarperCollins, 2014 (1928)
Hardcover, Softcover, Paperback, CD, e-Book
* * *   Reviewed by Mary Ann Smyth

We all know that if Lord Peter Wimsey appears anywhere in a story, it's going to be a very good one. Wimsey is the character developed by Dorothy L. Sayers (known as 'The Mistress of the Golden Age Mystery'), who has the knack for ferreting out culprits. He is aided in his investigations by his man Bunter.

Peter is a member of the Bellona Club and had intended to take his lunch there. However, finding a dead member of the club in one of the overstuffed armchairs forces him to delay his meal. The corpse had been a ninety-year-old General. Rigor mortis had set in but one of his legs seemed to be fairly loose. Strange! No one knew how long the old man had been ignored in his chair by the fire.

Wimsey sets about tracing the General's last moves with Bunter (as usual) doing leg work. As this death occurred on November 11, the anniversary of the end of World War I, the General's passing is even more poignant, especially since he did not have a red poppy in his coat's buttonhole. He had been a cantankerous old soldier, but he deserved the respect one naturally gives to the dead.

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club is another of Sayer's finely crafted mysteries. With her delightfully dry wit and her ability to fashion interesting characters, all of her books whet the appetite for more. She wrote 27 books before her death in 1957.

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