kerravonsen | Defending Dorothy

Last night while eating my dinner I watched a documentary about Agatha Christie, which was quite interesting. Alas the fly in the ointment was a little, needless, bit where they made a big point that a particular detective story by Dorothy L. Sayers was "all romance and no detection", apparently because they objected to the fact that the victim was a haemophiliac. And then they go on to say that Christie, by contrast, was masterful in distracting the reader with a red herring about coffee and sugar, while the real administration of the poison in question was due to a chemical reaction between tonic water and bromide.

Huh? I really don't see how they have a leg to stand on, apart from being allergic to romance. I've read the Sayers novel to which they refer, and the "romance" part of it is only a small portion of it (since the romance between the two characters takes about three books to get fulfilled, you can hardly say that the romance has taken over the books to the detriment of the detection!)

So let us consider the other objection, the haemophilia. Perhaps they think it isn't "fair", to have such an unusual victim who messes up all the normal chains of deduction. But aren't all red herrings "unfair"? The beauty of this one is that it is both a red herring and a clue. Are they objecting to it because it's obscure? But so is the reaction of bromide and tonic water, for people who aren't chemists (or pharmicists, as Christie was). I'm actually quite proud of myself with this particular Sayers novel because I figured it out about half a page before it was actually revealed, because haemophilia was a bit less obscure with me, as one of the guys at school was a haemophiliac. Perhaps they object because the victim wasn't "normal", as if there's some unwritten rule that all murder victims must be average, but you don't see them objecting to elderly, or bedridden, or blind victims... because their dead bodies don't produce red herrings as clues.