Murder Must Advertise is more scathing expose or satire than a whodunit; the murderer is apparent. It's good fun though, some ploys discussed in the novel are still in use 85 years later, and (not-so-spoiler alert) it was known that cigarettes were not great for one's health, but what is health compared to the sophistication and allure of crushed butts, ochre-stained teeth and fingers and ashy breath?

Sayers writes gushingly of her hero-detective Lord Peter Wimsey, going undercover at Pym's Publicity. Reading his unparalleled physical accomplishments and play at an alter ego, I wondered if Sayers had picked up a "The Shadow" pulp novel (the time would have been right, or maybe those super-man detectives were in intercontinental vogue in the early 1930s).

I'll likely recommend this but I can't give it five stars. I've read in English since I was three, but the cricket match near the end of the novel tempted me to copy some paragraphs into emails to my UK friends pleading for translation, and had me wondering how many 1930s Great Britons would understand Canadian announcer Foster Hewitt's play-by-play commentary of a Maple Leafs - Canadiens hockey game.

One 'picked up and dropped' character early in the novel is reading a Wodehouse novel. This was endearing enough to merit a minimum of four stars.