Murder Must Advertise

Murder Must Advertise was published in 1933 and is one of the most distinctive Lord Peter novels because of its workplace setting. Lord Peter goes undercover at Pym’s Publicity, a London advertising agency modeled directly on Benson’s, the firm where Sayers herself had worked for nine years as a copywriter. He assumes the identity of Death Bredon, a junior copywriter, after a previous copywriter named Victor Dean has died by falling down the office stairs in what looks like an accident.

The novel is partly a satire of the early advertising industry, and Sayers’s lived experience of it provides much of the book’s specific texture: the office politics, the absurd account meetings, the petty rivalries between copywriters, the brilliant slogans being produced for products nobody actually needs. The underlying murder plot turns out to involve a drug-smuggling ring using advertising copy to send coded messages to dealers. The book is unusually socially engaged for the series and shows Sayers at her most observationally precise. A strong middle-period entry that works as a standalone.