Oof! Badly misattributes stuff in Dorothy L. Sayers, and of course I noticed. Claims that “an analytical chemist“ (Sir James Lubbock) finds “arsenic on the victim's shoe“ during The Unpleasantness of the Bellona Club. It's nothing of the kind: Wimsey goes to see him, Lubbock is finishing a previous job, and then says the bit Hone quotes about arsenic about *that*.
The sample from the shoe is paint, not arsenic.
Immediate eyebrow raising here.
shanaqui Like, this book isn't about Sayers at all, so it'd be rather harsh to consider it a huge error, but at the same time, either it shows a cavalier attitude to facts I *can* verify easily -- what about the rest? -- or someone struggling very much with interpretation (the scene I describe is really very clear in Sayers' book), in which case unsuitable to write *this* book analysing the career and debunking of Thomas J. Wise's forgeries. 7h
9 likes1 comment
so-so
