Wimsey covers: Five Red Herrings

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    oh this is so not the way my blog was supposed to be. it was supposed to have much more Harriet Walter love and much less shouting and much less experimental swearing and much less general idiocy.

    LET US HAVE WIMSEY BOOKS (to fight the late-night blues!)

    Five Red Herrings (1931)

    Olawd this one. Nevermind. But no, it must be got through. Completionism! Is that a word? No. Bah. Thoroughness! Completion-philia! My mother hasn't even finished this book, you know. She's read all the others but couldn't make it further than a few chapters into FRH. The stolen bicycles and train-time-tables proved to be too much for her patience, I think.

    So if one has to come up with a book-cover illustration for Five Red Herrings*, one has the general idea of an artist/fisherman-corpse-on-a-hillside premise to work with. So what's been done with it?

    *(you know you've got Astaire on the brain when you accidentally type "Five Fred Herrings" the first go-round. I would own sixteen copies of that book and read them all to dust and smithereens.)

     I like this picture. It's pretty. It is a dude in a beret and a long coat off to do paintin' things. I feel kinda bad knowing he is not long for this world. (I know the murderee in the story was a total jerkface, but...this guy! this guy is stylin'!)

    Annnd here we have a dude - probably Lord Peter - fishing...fishing in formalwear...which is always such a great idea...
    I still really love the minimalist covers, though.

    Not actually a book cover (again) but Ian Carmichael what are you wearing sir

     I don't fully understand this one but I could only find so many covers so here it is

    Is that fish lying on top of those paintbrushes or being stabbed by them? I am not even sure! But it is definitely bleeding from the corner of its mouth and that is hilarious to me for some reason.

    Preetee. I 'specially like le tree in yon background.

    I am guessing that this came from the same people who did the awesomely trippy six-Harriets-one-of-whom-is-in-a-bottle cover of Strong Poison. I really really like it! It is striking and minimalist and orange and has a very amusingly disjointed tagline. (also why is there a period both before and after the L in Dorothy L Sayers i would like to know)

    I WANT THIS TO BE PRETTY BUT IT IS NOT

    Clear winner!

    WIll add more if I find them. In the meantime, bed.