Five Red Herrings cover art

Five Red Herrings

Lord Peter Wimsey, Book 7

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Five Red Herrings

By: Dorothy L. Sayers
Narrated by: Jane McDowell
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About this listen

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. His eighth appearance takes him to an artists' colony (based on a real one) in Scotland during the 1920s.

Lord Peter Wimsey could imagine the artist stepping back, the stagger, the fall down to where the pointed rocks grinned like teeth.

But was it an accident or murder? Six members of the close-knit Galloway artists' colony do not regret Campbell's death.

Five of them are red herrings.

©1931 Trustees of Anthony Fleming (deceased) (P)2015 Hachette Audio Crime Fiction

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Critic reviews

"She combined literary prose with powerful suspense, and it takes a rare talent to achieve that. A truly great storyteller." (Minette Walters)
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Yet more brilliance in detecting, with loads of facts to get confused with. Just Brilliant

Five Red Herrings

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ignore tiresome diatribes about bad narration. almost put me off buying. would've been my loss

Excellent Book. Excellent narration

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You can't beat Dorothy L Sayers but you can kill a book stone dead. I had to give up by chapter 5, I couldn't stand the awful Scottish accents that made what was said unintelligible. To make matters worse the narrator has some very strange pronunciations of common everyday words which becomes extremely irritating extremely quickly. Why does a simple Scottish "aye" become a banshee wail of "aieeee" every time? Really annoyed I wasted a credit on it!

Great book ruined by the narrator

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Goes a bit overboard on timetables on this one in the plot for my taste. The narrator is still not the best but it's still mildly entertaining.

Bit long winded

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I have always enjoyed this story, knowing the setting well. But I have to agree with the reviews about the awful narration. Both the accent and the rhythm of speech do not represent the speech in any part of Scotland (and I have lived in Scotland for many years) and sound like the worst sort caricatures. It grates so badly I could listen only for a few minutes at a time. I really looked forward to the English characters for a bit of relief.

Good story, dreadful narration

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Lots of twists and much tabulation of timetables required! I've read the book and knew who the murderer was but even so I couldn't work out how Lord Peter came to the conclusion until the grand reveal. Jane McDowell rather strangles the Scots accents, but it (mostly) doesn't detract from the pleasure of listening. I'm getting used to her unusual reading style by now, and she at least pronounces Kirkcudbright properly!

Great story shame about the accents!

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there are far to many suspects in this tale, too complicated for me x

too many suspects

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Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I enjoyed it as a story but will not listen to the poor accent again.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Five Red Herrings?

Coincidence of the maths tutor.

What didn’t you like about Jane McDowell’s performance?

she could not even pronounce the word loch meaning lake properly. Also I would have thought the pronunciation of actual place names could have been researched.

Could you see Five Red Herrings being made into a movie or a TV series? Who would the stars be?

No

Good story spoiled by pseudo scots accent.

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Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes. It's a good tale, as one would expect from Dorothy L.Sayers and is generally well read, but the reader is clearly not a Scot. While her Scots accents for various characters are not too bad, she gets the pronunciation of the town "Girvan" completely wrong, putting the emphasis on the second syllable when it should be on the first. It sounds rather exotic every time it's said!

Have you listened to any of Jane McDowell’s other performances? How does this one compare?

No.

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No. It was entertaining, though.

Get the place names right!

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I love Peter Wimsey and I usually love this narrator. However I could not manage this due to the horrific attempts at accents which made this difficult to listen to (really awful when the book is set in Scotland!).

Please don't do Scottish accents!

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