The book: Lord Peter Whimsey’s mother has telephoned him to get her son to help out Mr. Thipp, an architect she has hired to do restoration work at her church. Thipp is apparently in trouble with the police over a dead body wearing nothing but a pince-nez who was found in the bathtub of Thipp’s upper-floor apartment. Meanwhile, the family of Sir Reuben Levy has reported Sir Reuben to be missing. Are the two events connected? Is the body Sir Reuben’s? If not, whose body is it?

The mystery, while suitably labyrinthine, is conventional of the genre, with clues dropped along the way and everything tied up neatly at the end. The main thing that sets this novel apart from other mysteries is the character of Lord Peter Whimsey. Whimsey is unusual among mystery novel detectives in that he’s not that unusual. True, he’s rich and slightly eccentric, but unlike Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot or Auguste Dupin, Whimsey is no social misfit. Instead, he’s an engaging, likeable character who the reader cares about when he winds up in danger toward the end of the book. It’s no wonder that Sayers returned to write about him for many more novels.

Rating: 8/10

Edison’s Conquest of Mars, by Garrett P. Serviss, is one of the many science fiction novels published in the nineteenth century. Although science fiction was not at the time thought of as a distinct literary genre, it was a very popular literary form, with almost every fiction magazine regularly publishing science fiction stories and novels. ‘Edison’s Conquest of Mars’ was published in 1898 as an unauthorized sequel to H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, but did not achieve the fame of its predecessor. The book was endorsed by Thomas Edison, the hero of the book - though not by Wells. (Summary from Wikipedia)

• Gutenberg e-text
• Wikipedia - Garrett P. Serviss
• Wikipedia - Edison’s Conquest of Mars
• LibriVox’s Edison’s Conquest of Mars Internet Archive page
• Zip file of the entire book - 203.7MB

In this celebration of diversity, learn about the myriad histories and cultures behind our volunteers. (summary by Eric Ray)

• LibriVox’s Local Color Collection Vol. 001 Internet Archive page
• Zip file of the entire collection - 95.7MB