The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L Sayers (BBC Audio ISBN: 978-1-846-071485), starring Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey and Peter Jones as Bunter.
As a rather gruesome child, I read nothing but murder mysteries between the ages of ten and thirteen. I remember regular panic attacks at the thought that Agatha Christie only wrote about seventy books and what was I going to do when I had read them all? Luckily the horrible situation never arose as my tastes changed before I got there, but when I look back I'm surprised that, to forestall this, I never read anything by Dorothy L Sayers.
Nowadays I tend to enjoy murder mysteries only in TV adaptations such as Morse or Midsomer Murders; Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin are the only detectives I have read in the past few years. That perhaps explains why it felt safer and more likely to appeal if I listened to a dramatisation of a Sayers book, rather than a straight read, for my first audio book experience. But I can't say I made a mistake: this BBC radio production is excellent, and Ian Carmichael is wonderful as Wimsey. It must have been pretty exhausting work for him as I don't think there was a scene where Wimsey doesn't appear, but he was believable throughout, light and witty with a hint of steel in the background, and never once that slight stiltedness that some actors can fall into when performing for the radio.
My only problem was that I fell so easily into the world of early twentieth century clubmen that Wimsey inhabits, that I forgot it was a detective piece I was listening to and was mildly surprised when things got serious; I was thinking of Wimsey as more of an Uncle Gally character (from P G Wodehouse's Blandings books) than a detective, not helped by the fact that Ian Carmichael has played Galahad on the radio. I soon recovered my bearings though, and my prediction from the other day was was correct - after the first half hour I had to listen to the rest in one go.
The story started off very simply: old General Fentiman, who could always be found dozing in his chair in his club, turns out one day to not be sleeping after all, but dead. The trouble really starts when his sister's will is read; she died at roughly the same time and left the General the bulk of her fortune if he survived her, but if he predeceases her then a young companion of hers gets most of the money - half a million pounds, which was an enormous fortune in the days after the Great War. Wimsey is asked to attempt to narrow down the timeline and, as he does so, begins to uncover all sorts of skulduggery.
I can highly recommend this as a light way to pass a couple of hours, excellent casting and acting with a story line that hooks. It is a very comforting place to escape to. I don't particularly enjoy gritty crime stories set in modern times, I much prefer this rosy vision of the past where everyone was polite, unless they were a cad, and even a murderer can be relied upon to do the decent thing. Pure fantasy, but also pure enjoyment. If there are any more dramatisations to be had I will be snapping them up - this could well be my audio book niche - and I'll also be looking for books by Sayers to finally fix the omission of my twelve year old self.