Dorothy Sayer's style is unmistakable. In this text, she applies it to a murder story, introducing a cast of apparently unremarkable, everyday characters, each of which has a potential motive for murder. Most writers would arrive at a "10 little Indians" situation, eliminating the suspects one by one in the tradition of Hercule Poirot; Sayers, however, eliminates nobody, and confirms nothing - we are left, even at the last sentence, suspecting that much more happened than was actually told.

Even if she had not improved her writing significantly after this, Dorothy Sayers' book would still be well worth reading.