Dorothy L. Sayers, A Treasury of Sayers Stories

Dorothy L. Sayers, A Treasury of Sayers Stories
First published 1958 by Victor Gollancz Ltd.
This edition an ebook

Twenty-four mystery shorts published by Sayers at various times during her career.  Sixteen of these feature Lord Peter Wimsey and six chronicle the detective career of a traveler n wine and spirits, Montague Egg.  The other two (and the only ones I had not read at least once before) are one-offs.  I have to say that these are far below the standard set in her mystery novels.  In general, the plotting is looser, the characters--even Wimsey, as portrayed here--less interesting.  I found the Egg stories to be clever, but fairly annoying (partly because of Egg's propensity for turning every experience into a slogan for a salesman), mostly because there was not a lot of detection--the solution tended to be obvious.

The Wimsey stories are less disappointing, but far below the novels in terms of plot and character.  Too many of the stories deal with "mysteries" that are fairly trivial.  "The  Abominable Story of the Man With Copper Fingers" (presumably the earliest of the Wimsey stories) is more a horror story that a mystery.  And, as it is being told, by Wimsey, long after the events in the story occurred, there's little suspense.  "The Entertaining Episode of the Article in Question" might have been a "fair-play" mystery for a readership with a working knowledge of French; for the rest of us, both Wimsey's interest and the solution remain opaque.

Uncle Meleager's will involves solving an abstruse crossword puzzle in which the grid is the floor of an ornamental pool.  The clues will be virtually meaningless to today's readers; whether their contemporary readers will find them less obscure is beyond me.  (An example couplet-clue:  Foolish or wise, yet one remains alone/'Twixt strength and Justice on a heavenly throne."  (Virgo)

I could go on, I suppose, but I'm not sure it's worth it.  As artifacts, they are of interest, and Sayers writes well (even when the matte is minimal).  These are, I think, for completists only.