The Nine Tailors

⚖The case for it

Lord Peter Wimsey gets snowed in at a village church during a New Year's bell-ringing marathon and stumbles into an old crime. Sayers incorporated campanology with such expertise that bell-ringers still read it reverently. The final revelation, who killed the victim and how, is among the most elegant solutions in detective fiction.

— the canon

✕The case against

Be honest with yourself about how much change-ringing you want. Sayers explains Kent Treble Bob Major with a scholar's thoroughness, and the fen-drainage and parish subplots move at parish speed. The solution is genuinely lovely, but it arrives after long stretches in which Wimsey investigates nothing in particular while the bells get described.

— the honest librarian