Review: In the Teeth of the Evidence

In the Teeth of the Evidence by Dorothy L. Sayers

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This Sayers collection is of the old school mystery stories; a crime is committed by persons unknown, the daring detective (or traveling salesman in some of these) turns up and hears the clues. Through clever trickery or astute observations, the detective figures out quickly who the culprit must be, to the surprise of all around. They're perfectly fine stories for what they are, but they read far too much like Encyclopedia Brown stories, to me. This likely comes from both having read every Encyclopedia Brown story I could get my hands on when I was a child, and from having read too many modern mysteries that don't rely on such trickery for the plot. I say trickery because that's what much of it is. The "solutions" are often paper thin, relying on the guilty parties simply giving up as soon as they realize that the detective has them, even when the evidence against them is circumstantial at best.

Not a bad collection by any means, but too many stories of the same type, all at once, to be a truly great collection.



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