“It might become available, you never know — if the Church of Rome went to pot or Switzerland invaded Italy — whereas a strange corpse doesn’t turn up in a suburban bathroom more than once in a lifetime — at least, I should think not — at any rate, the number of times it’s happened, with a pince-nez, might be counted on the fingers of one hand, I imagine. Dear me! it’s a dreadful mistake to ride two hobbies at once.”
Dorothy L. Sayers, Whose Body?, pg. 4.
Unlike the typical “hard-boiled detective” trope that is used in most crime fictions where the detective is tough, cynical, and emotionless towards the violence that occurs in whatever novel he exists in, here we have Lord Peter Wimsey. Lord Peter, our detective for this novel, is not “hard-boiled” due to the fact that he associates solving crime to be a “hobby”, similar to that of bidding on furniture. Lord Peter seems to to be delighted at the prospect of having the “once in a lifetime” opportunity to be apart of this mystery, which is an uncommon approach in the typical mystery novel.