Best 1933 Adventures (5)

By: Joshua Glenn
April 22, 2018

One in a series of 10 posts identifying Josh Glenn’s favorite 1933 adventure novels. Happy 85th anniversary!

Dorothy L. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey crime adventure Murder Must Advertise.

Some Sayers fans consider this the best Wimsey novel; I don’t agree — there isn’t enough Harriet Vane — but it’s still pretty great. After the suspicious death of copywriter Victor Dean, in the offices of Pym’s Publicity, Wimsey goes undercover in the agency… as copywriter and louche man-about-town Death (“Deeth”) Bredon. Sayers worked for years in a London ad agency, and her depiction of Pym’s is less satire than a semi-affectionate, semi-acidulous send-up of the daily process via which consumers are hoodwinked. In fact, the book has been described as a novel about an ad firm that just happens to concern a murder… though, as the plot thickens, we discover that there’s a more sinister game afoot: sex, drugs, and blackmail among London’s postwar Bright Young People! And more murders, too not to mention an epic intramural cricket match between Pym’s and a soft-drink company’s team.

Fun facts: R.A. Bevan, a significant figure in 1920s–1930s British communications and advertising (think: Guinness, Bovril, Johnnie Walker, Colman’s Mustard), was the the inspiration for the novel’s Mr Ingleby character.

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Best 1933 Adventures (5)

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