Outside of a Dog: Kate Nepveu's Book Log

I'm almost pleased that I didn't like Dorothy Sayers' The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club much better on this re-read; I was starting to be afraid that I'd gone all uncritically fangirlish or something. It's a clever mystery, and does some very nice riffs on veterans and wars, and continues to move Peter's character forward as a character, and is generally pretty good. But I simply cannot believe that part of the ending is happy, and the narrative fairly clearly wants me to. [*] For some reason, I'm not willing to forgive this the way I've forgiven the plot holes and unpleasant social bits of prior books.

[*] It's only one sentence, so I'll rot-13 the spoiler: v fgebatyl qvfyvxr eboreg sragvzna naq pnaabg pbaprvir bs naa qbeynaq orvat unccl jvgu uvz.

Random other comments:

• I read by recognizing word shapes and beginnings/endings, not phonetics, especially with names. As a result, I always think of this book as taking place at the Belladonna Club.
• One of the wills in this book is a really excellent example of a reasonable-seeming will with hidden defects. Consider every contingency when drafting your will, no matter how remote: every permutation of gains and losses of property, of births and deaths, marriages and divorces.
• Before this re-read, I hadn't disliked any recurring character but the Duchess of Denver. I didn't want to agree with some disparaging remarks about Parker that I've seen here and there, but his limitations are more apparent to me now, alas.
• I think I read this wildly out of order the first time, because somehow I hadn't noticed that Ann Dorland is kind of a trial run for Harriet Vane. And Peter's patronizing to her, too.
• I think Peter must have had a shell-shock attack after the end of the case, because of the line "He sent you all sorts of messages, by the way," in the epilogue; at least, it seems the best explanation of why Peter would have been unavailable.

Obviously, I was mistaken when I thought that a short story collection came before this one; short stories next, and then Strong Poison—Harriet at last, and more Miss Climpson!