Books: "The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club"

I recently finished reading The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers. Published in 1928, this is the fifth book featuring Sayers' famous amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey. Martin Edwards makes many mentions of Ayers in his history of mystery writing, The Life of Crime, which I recently enjoyed. So I thought I should at least give it a go.

The "unpleasantness" in question is the death of an elderly member at Lord Peter Wimsey's club, apparently by natural causes. The exact timing of the death turns out to be important for resolving the Dearly Departed's will, so Wimsey is asked to apply his now-famous powers of detection to help clarify matters.

The plot seemed sound and there are several interesting characters, though my enjoyment was tempered somewhat by the dialogue. Perhaps members of upper-crust English society truly spoke like this in the early 20th century, but this 21st-century middle-class American had occasional trouble using context clues to guess the meaning of statements and colloquialisms.

Goodreads gives The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club a 4.05 rating. I would personally rate it a little lower, say 3.75, though I don't regret investing the time to read it, as Sayers is certainly among the canon of Golden Age mystery writers.