Tag: have his carcase

Episode 21: HAVE HIS CARCASE, part 4

~ Charis Ellison

In which Charis and Sharon wrap up our discussion (finally!) of HAVE HIS CARCASE. We pick up about halfway through the book with an emotional watershed moment for Peter and Harriet, cover the discovery of the corpse and subsequent hullabaloo, and give away the whodunnit and howdunnit. Also in this episode: some fond ribbing of Theater People, Mrs. Weldon as the series’ Final Girl when it comes to elderly women murdered for their fortunes, our impatience with ciphers, and more!

Shownotes:

  • Many thanks to supporters who’ve joined us on Patreon! We’ll be sharing behind-the-scenes content, creating open posts for patrons to chat with us after each episode drops, and if you sign up at the $20/month Dowager Duchess level, Charis will sing every verse of “On Ilkla Moor Baht’at” to you (or the victim of your choosing).
  • Sharon is never not bringing up The Secret History by Donna Tartt, and this episode is no exception.
  • Sharon also mentions the American competitive cooking show Chopped, in which chefs must create three courses out of secret ingredient boxes.
  • The audiobooks that Charis listens to are the ones narrated by Sir Ian Carmichael.
  • You’ll also get to hear us look up details of Thomas Beddoes’ Death’s Jest Book in real time in this episode.
  • Sharon quotes from Sayers’ letter to her cousin Ivy Shrimpton, collected in The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1899 to 1936: “I am struggling wiht another book—horribly complicated! But it must be done, under contract, so there’s nothing for it but to wire in and work it out.”
  • Charis would like it to be known that all her comments about Theater People come from a fond place, as she herself is also a Theater Person and can do the Alpha Psi Omega secret handshake to prove it!
  • Thank you to our patrons who’ve joined the Patreon at the $5 and up/month level as of the date we recorded this episode: Rose O., Jan L., Caisee F., Jessie S., Sarah C., Katherine S., and Kindra C. Your support literally makes this work possible!

Episode 20: HAVE HIS CARCASE, part 3

~ Sharon

Surprise! Charis and Sharon return at long last to the shores of Wilvercombe to continue our discussion on HAVE HIS CARCASE. We share life updates for both of us, discuss why this book’s plot is so impossible to talk about, bring up Raymond Chandler’s thoughts on Golden Age detectives, and cover an important emotional watershed for Harriet and Peter. Also: we run through changes in our posting schedule going forward and introduce our Patreon!

This episode tips its hat at the whodunnit of the murder but does not give detailed spoilers about the howdunnit.

Shownotes:

  • Here is the fuller citation of Sayers’ letters to her publisher Victor Gollancz about turning from Five Red Herrings to writing Have His Carcase, as excerpted in The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1899 to 1936: “[Readers] have also grumbled that Lord Peter a) falls in love b) talks too discursively–here is a book [Five Red Herrings] in which nobody falls in love (unless you count Campbell) and in which practically every sentence is necessary to the plot (except a remark or two on Scottish scenery and language). Much good may it do ’em! Anyway, I will return to a less rigidly intellectual formula in HAVE-HIS-CARCASE which will turn on an alibi and a point of medicine, but will, I trust, contain a certain amount of human interest and a more or less obvious murderer. But I haven’t made up the plot yet…”
  • We discuss the central idea found in Brigitta Hudácskó’s “Ruritania by the Sea-Detection by the Seaside in Dorothy L. Sayers’s Have His Carcase,” which ran in HJEAS: Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies Vol. 27, Issue 1 in 2021. Our thanks to Hudácskó for sending us the article and for our podcast’s first scholarly citation!
  • We discuss at length Raymond Chandler’s 1944 article for The Atlantic Monthly titled “The Simple Art of Murder”
  • We refer to the meme Worst Person You Know Made a Great Point
  • And we also share our mutual love for the 2013 film Pacific Rim

Episode 16: HAVE HIS CARCASE, part 1

~ Sharon

In which Charis and Sharon attempt to begin discussing HAVE HIS CARCASE, the seventh Lord Peter Wimsey mystery. Spoiler alert: they don’t get very far. They cover their mutual love of the book’s opening paragraph, the practice of the British walking tour, and Harriet Vane’s discovery of a corpse. They then go on a very long tangent about the depiction of policing in detective fiction. Also: Harriet’s relationship with the press, how various characters in the novel attempt to construct narratives for themselves, and Sayers’ increasing attentiveness to place in the latter half of the Wimsey series.

This episode covers the first three chapters of HAVE HIS CARCASE and does not give away the whodunnit.

Download the episode 16 transcript.

Shownotes:

  • “There’s only one set of footprints in the sand and it was not when Jesus carried the corpse.” Sharon is making flippant reference to this (in her opinion) terribly insipid Christian poem.
  • The Terry Pratchett quote that Charis mentions is indeed from NIGHT WATCH. The full quote is: “Yes, thought Vimes. That’s the way it was. Privilege, which just means private law. Two types of people laugh at the law: those that break it and those that make it.” But Pratchett also has another character, William de Worde, mention the literal meaning in THE TRUTH: “We’ve always been privileged, you see. Privilege just means ‘private law.’ That’s exactly what it means. He [his father, Lord de Worde] just doesn’t believe the ordinary laws apply to him. He really believes they can’t touch him, and that if they do he can just shout until they go away. That’s the de Worde tradition, and we’re good at it. Shout at people, get your own way, ignore the rules.”
  • The Tana French book that Sharon brings up in our discussion about policing is THE TRESPASSER.
  • “I just realized I’m thinking of the beginning of GREASE.”
  • Sharon refers to M.M. Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque, first put forth in PROBLEMS OF DOSTOEVSKY’S POETICS, in our discussion about the way that the characters at the Wilvercombe hotel create different personas for themselves.