Whose Body?

Whose Body? is a mystery novel by the English writer Dorothy L. Sayers, published in 1923. It was her first novel and the book in which she introduced Lord Peter Wimsey, who went on to appear in a long series of stories.

The body in the bath is a puzzle in a very particular sense. There is nothing to identify the man beyond his glasses, nobody knows how he came to be there, and the household of the flat where he was found has no explanation to offer. Wimsey, an aristocrat with time on his hands and a genuine appetite for the work, is not satisfied to leave it to the police.

Running beside that case is the disappearance of Sir Reuben Levy, a well-known financier, from his own home in the middle of the night. The inspector leading the official investigation thinks the two are connected and is wrong in an interesting way, while Wimsey works the problem from the other end with the help of his manservant Bunter and his friend Inspector Parker. The novel is as much a portrait of a man finding his vocation as it is a puzzle.