Tag Archives: Lord Peter Wimsey

Fiction, Reviews

‘A Presumption of Death,’ by Jill Paton Walsh

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…Like the gentleman in the carol, I have seen a wonder sight—the Catholic padre and the refugee Lutheran minister having a drink together and discussing, in very bad Latin, the persecution of the Orthodox Church in Russia. I have seldom heard so much religious toleration or so many false quantities…

A while ago I reviewed Thrones, Dominations, the first Lord Peter Wimsey novel written by the late Jill Paton Walsh, based on notes by Dorothy Sayers, the creator of the character. I generally liked it, though I thought it sometimes a little forced.

But I thought I’d try the next book in the series, A Presumption of Death, a book Ms. Walsh wrote all by herself, based on a suggestion from Sayers’ writings. She took on a great challenge, but in my opinion the results were almost pitch perfect.

It’s 1939, and England is at war. British forces are on the back foot in Norway (there are many references to Norway in this story). Lord Peter Wimsey, long an asset of British Intelligence, is doing some kind of hush-hush, dangerous work in a place he’s not at liberty to reveal. His nephew Gerald is having the time of his life as an RAF pilot. Harriet Vane, Lord Peter’s wife, has moved the family – including her two babies – from London to Tallboys, to the country house they acquired in Busman’s Honeymoon. In the town, airmen from a nearby base are having a lot of fun with the “land girls,” city girls enlisted to do farm work in the absence of male workers.

Then, after the town’s first air raid drill, one of the girls is found murdered – clearly killed by someone familiar with unarmed combat. The local police detective asks Harriet to help him with the investigation – he feels out of his depth, and she has experience in these things, both as a detective novelist and as a collaborator with her husband. But she makes little progress. Then another body is found – that of a convalescing airman who’d rented a local cottage, apparently slaughtered in a makeshift abattoir in the Wimsey’s barn. When that airman’s identification proves questionable, mystery piles on mystery. That’s when Lord Peter himself appears at last. His exalted connections allow him, with Harriet’s help, to get to the truth of the situation.

I can honestly say that I completely forgot that I was reading a pastiche as I read A Presumption of Death. The book seemed to me a completely successful recreation of the characters, the settings, and the period. If Dorothy Sayers had continued writing Lord Peter books, I’m pretty sure she’d have produced something very much like this. The resolution of the book, in particular, seemed to me very much in Sayers’ spirit – a reconciliation of justice and mercy, with an ambivalent suggestion that mercy might not be as merciful as we imagine.

One annoying peculiarity in the book was the author’s repeated misspelling of the word “bailing” in “bailing out” (of an airplane). She spells it “baling.” The editors should have caught this (assuming it’s not just spelled differently in England).

I was also surprised to learn that (according to Lord Peter’s sister) the Delagardie side of Lord Peter’s family is not French, but Swedish.

Anyway, I relished A Presumption of Death. Well done.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Thrones, Dominations,’ by Dorothy L. Sayers & Jill Patton Walsh

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“It is perfectly possible, I suppose,” said Lord Peter to his wife, over breakfast, “for someone to be murdered while doing something she does not usually do, or behaving in a way unaccustomed to her. But it is an affront to the natural feelings of a criminologist, all the same.”

I was aware that Dorothy L. Sayers had begun a Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane novel back in the 1930s and abandoned it, leaving behind some isolated scenes and a tentative outline. And that the late author Jill Patton Walsh had completed the novel, Thrones, Dominations, which was published in 1999. But I hadn’t taken the trouble to read it. I feared that history would have contaminated it, especially in terms of feminism. Miss Sayers was certainly a feminist in her time, but the world has changed, and modern readers (we are told) demand certain thematic adjustments. I apply the same avoidance to the contemporary Battle of the Sexes as I do to the challenges of modern dating.

But a deal on Thrones, Dominations showed up, and I bought it. And by and large I was very pleased.

The story begins not long after the end of Busman’s Honeymoon. Lord Peter and Harriet are in Paris, still on their honeymoon. There in a restaurant they encounter a couple of other newlyweds, the London theatrical investor (“angel”) Laurence Harwell and his wife Rosamund. Rosamund is the daughter of a convicted embezzler who spent time in prison, but has overcome that social handicap through the sheer power of her ethereal beauty.

Then the story shifts to London, and I must admit it drags a bit in terms of plot. We spend a lot of time satisfying fans’ curiosity about how Lord Peter and Harriet will organize their new household. Interesting for that group (of which I am one), but I think it makes for a slow dramatic start. However, eventually a murder does happen, and the logical suspect has a solid alibi, while another fellow looks pretty guilty but Lord Peter has his doubts. It all leads to one of those alibi-breaking puzzles that’s so characteristic of Miss Sayers’ work, which was very gratifying. The conclusion was tragic and touching.

I saw occasional traces of a modern sensibility in the story, but all in all, Jill Patton Walsh did a very good job writing the kind of story Miss Sayers would have produced if she hadn’t lost interest. There were moments when the characters reminded me why I love them, and that made for delightful reading.

I don’t generally like the Wimsey/Vane novels as well as the earlier stories, because I find Harriet a little dull. She’s essentially the author without her Christian faith, and Sayers without God would be a kind of a bore, in my opinion.

But that’s just me.

The only serious error I noticed was that one major character changed hair color over the course of the story (unless I got them confused with someone else).

Thrones, Dominations is, overall, a highly successful literary experiment, and is recommended, especially for Wimsey fans.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Busman’s Honeymoon,’ by Dorothy L. Sayers

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Dorothy L. Sayers initially intended to end her Lord Peter Wimsey series of mystery novels with Gaudy Night, in which Harriet Vane finally succumbs to Peter’s charm and agrees to marry him. But later she collaborated with Muriel St. Clare Byrne on a Wimsey play, called Busman’s Honeymoon. In the play, the honeymoon is interrupted by the discovery of a murdered body, to the couple’s frustration and some interesting character revelation.

Later Sayers turned the play into a novel. It’s not considered one of the best of the series, but it has virtues that make it well worth reading.

The story opens with a series of letters written by various characters, describing the wedding and its initial aftermath. Harriet has confided to Peter’s mother that she always wanted to live in a particular house she used to visit as a child, in a village in Hertfordshire. Peter has delightedly bought it for her, and he and his man Bunter have arranged for the house to be ready for their occupation when they show up on the wedding night.

However, they find the house locked and uninhabited, and none of the servants were expecting them. At last they get in, make shift to set up in spite of inconveniences like blocked chimneys, and consummate their marriage. The next morning the missing former owner is found – bludgeoned to death in the cellar.

The local police superintendent takes to Wimsey immediately, being, like him, devoted to collecting literary allusions for insertion into conversation. Lord Peter can’t resist involving himself in the mystery. They will encounter a collection of local eccentrics, all with various motives for wanting the victim dead, but with either insufficient motivations or solid alibis. The final solution will prove to involve a genuine scoundrel and a baffling murder weapon.

The story gets slow in some stretches, especially in what I assume (it’s been a while since I read it) the added scenes not found in the play. The great virtue of the book, in my opinion, is the section at the end where Peter suffers a PTSD reaction as the murderer’s execution hour approaches, and Harriet comforts him.

Recommended. I also think some Christian college ought to stage the original play some time. I wish I’d gotten the chance to play Lord Peter when I was young and thin.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Gaudy Night,’ by Dorothy L. Sayers

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She paused. “I know what you’re thinking—that anybody with proper sensitive feeling would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well. I don’t see why proper feeling should prevent me from doing my proper job.”

I have reached the penultimate installment in Dorothy L. Sayers’ immortal Lord Peter Wimsey series. Gaudy Night is probably not Miss Sayers’ best mystery novel, nor by any means her most popular. But it carries the satisfaction of finally bringing the Harriet Vane cycle to its proper culmination (though she’s in the final book too, and rightly so).

Harriet Vane is a popular mystery novelist who once stood in the dock on trial for her life. Lord Peter Wimsey saved her from the gallows, and ever since he has been courting her in a low-key manner, aware that she has a low opinion of herself and is chary about new relationships.

In this book, Harriet goes back to her college (the fictional Shrewsbury – a sly choice of name – a women’s college at Oxford University) for a Gaudy Night – a school reunion. She’s nervous about her reception, but it goes surprisingly well. The only real blot on her experience is a nasty note someone tucked into the sleeve of her academic gown – but she shrugs that off.

Soon after, she gets a letter from the Dean, inviting her to the opening of the new library. She also wants Harriet’s advice on a problem they’re having. Crude notes like the one she received are showing up more and more frequently, and there’s been minor vandalism. Harriet is a mystery writer – maybe she can ferret out the culprit – discreetly, of course.

Harriet is delighted to go, and plunges into the scholarly life. She even takes up research with an idea to earning her Master’s degree. But the poison pen writer is getting more and more aggressive – even to the point where lives are put in danger. In the end, it will take Lord Peter to come in and, with an objective eye, resolve the mystery.

The theme of the book is Dorothy Sayers’ recurring theme in all her work – vocation. She believed strongly that there was a moral obligation for a person to work at whatever God has best equipped them to do, rather than what society says they should do. (She and C. S. Lewis differed on that subject, and lived the consequences out in their personal lives.)

As one who knows the British university system only second-hand, I found some matters confusing. And I also had trouble keeping the scholarly characters straight. Nevertheless, I enjoyed watching Harriet’s journey to greater insight. This book is mostly Harriet’s, after all. Lord Peter only comes in at the end.

Recommended, of course.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Nine Tailors,’ by Dorothy L. Sayers

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“You’ve got too much imagination, Nobby,” said Parker.

“You wait, Charles,” said Lord Peter. “You wait till you get stuck on a ladder in a belfry in the dark. Bells are like cats and mirrors—they’re always queer, and it doesn’t do to think too much about them. Go on, Cranton.”

Dorothy L. Sayers achieved some remarkable things in her classic Lord Peter Wimsey series of mysteries. One of their impressive elements is the way she varies settings, both socially and geographically. I suspect that The Nine Tailors is one of her most beloved books, despite the fact that it spends a lot of time on the arcane English pastime of “change ringing,” in which church bells are rung in varying strings of ever-changing notes. The Nine Tailors combines a kind of epic sweep with profound human tragedy.

It’s Christmas Eve when Lord Peter and his man Bunter, speeding over the East Anglian fen country in his big Daimler car, go into a ditch, bending the axle. They are taken in by the kindly vicar of Fenchurch, a small community nearby. When the vicar announces sadly that they’re going to have to cancel their attempt to set a record ringing “Kent Treble Bob Majors” that night, because one of his ringers has fallen ill, noblesse oblige leaves Lord Peter no choice but to volunteer himself, as he has some experience as a change ringer. This involves nine hours of labor in the church tower when he could use some sleep, but everyone is very grateful. The next day Lord Peter drives away in his repaired car, assuming he’ll never return.

But some months later, the vicar calls and asks his help again. A strange thing has happened. While the sexton was opening a grave to bury a man with his recently deceased wife, a strange body was found in the grave. The face had been bashed in with a shovel and the hands removed, so it’s impossible to identify the man. Lord Peter, always keen for a mystery, quickly shows up and starts investigatin’.

It all seems to have something to do with a scandalous theft that occurred long ago, on the eve of the Great War. A guest at the local nobleman’s wedding had a valuable emerald necklace stolen. It has never been recovered. One of the house servants and an outside accomplice were arrested and sent to prison, shaming his wife, who still lives in the town, remarried after her husband escaped and died in an accident. The accomplice was still alive, though, having recently been released. The body may be his. But if so, who killed him, how did they kill him (there is no visible premortem wound), and why is he wearing French underwear?

Author Sayers turns the pealing of the bells into a kind of chorus that accompanies the drama up to its epic climax in a massive flood on the fens. The Nine Tailors is gripping and haunting. A masterpiece of the genre. Highly recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Murder Must Advertise,’ by Dorothy L. Sayers

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…the most convincing copy  was always written with the tongue in the cheek, a genuine conviction of the commodity’s worth producing—for some reason—poverty and flatness of style….

All in all, among the delights of Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey mystery series, Murder Must Advertise may be the most perfect specimen. Which is rather odd, to my mind, as it takes Lord Peter generally out of his natural environment (his priceless valet, Bunter, only makes a brief appearance). In Murder Must Advertise, Lord Peter goes undercover as an advertising copywriter, and finds to his surprise that he’s rather good at it. (Author Sayers herself spent some time in that very career – she is credited with coining the phrase, “It pays to advertise!”)

Victor Dean, a young copywriter at Pym’s Publicity, fell down an iron spiral staircase in the offices one day, breaking his neck. A letter to his employer was found among his effects, and that letter said that something illicit was going on among the staff. For that reason, Mr. Pym engages Lord Peter Wimsey to investigate. Lord Peter substitutes horn-rimmed glasses for his usual monocle and shows up for work, easily sliding into the circle of copywriters. He calls himself Death Bredon (these being his two actual middle names). Meanwhile, at night, Death Bredon becomes a habitue of wild parties hosted by a notorious young heiress. Drugs are being distributed at these parties, and somehow the drug network is connected to Pym’s Publicity. Death Bredon charms some people, insults others, and generally stirs things up to see what will happen. What happens is murder.

Murder Must Advertise is about as close as Miss Sayers ever came to full-blown hard-boiled fiction. Lord Peter is very different from Philip Marlowe, but there’s some of the same atmosphere here of mean streets and ruthless criminals. I like it quite a lot, it goes without saying.

Cautions, American readers, for a lengthy chapter involving a cricket game. Most of you will be as at sea in that environment as I am.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Have His Carcase,’ by Dorothy L. Sayers

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Harriet wished she knew more about times and tides. If Robert Templeton [her fictional detective] had happened, in the course of his brilliant career, to investigate a sea-mystery, she would, of course, have had to look up information on this point. But she always avoided sea-and-shore problems, just precisely on account of the labour involved.

The eighth Lord Peter Wimsey novel by Dorothy L. Sayers is Have His Carcase (a joke on “Habeus Corpus”). In this book, Lord Peter once again joins forces with Harriet Vane, mystery novelist, the woman he loves. Who continues to steadfastly refuse his marriage proposals.

Harriet is having trouble with her latest novel, and so has repaired to a (fictional) resort town on the southwest coast of England to concentrate. One day she takes a walk on a coastal road to clear her head, and stops for a picnic lunch on a beach below some cliffs. There she spies a human form lying immobile on top of a flat rock. Approaching to investigate, she finds a man dead, his throat cut, the blood still flowing freely. Knowing that the tide is coming in soon, she takes photos to document the body’s condition. By the time she makes it to the nearest town and gets the police to investigate, the body has washed away, not to be found for some days.

Harriet is a savvy businesswoman, and does not hesitate to tell the press about her discovery. She also starts asking questions about the victim. He was a “dancing partner” (gigolo) at one of the local hotels, and had recently become engaged to a very rich older woman. Which makes the woman’s son an obvious suspect in the murder, but he has a pretty good alibi.

Lord Peter soon shows up to help her investigate (the police don’t mind, of course, thanks to his reputation and political connections). Those police are inclined to dismiss the death as suicide, but Peter and Harriet find that theory improbable for several reasons. What they finally discover will be very strange indeed.

I hadn’t read Have His Carcase for nearly fifty years, and I liked it quite a lot, but not as much as I liked it the first time. I’d forgotten about the long section devoted to breaking a cipher (only interesting if you want to work it out on paper with the sleuths, which doesn’t appeal to me). And the final conclusion of the book was more ambivalent than I remembered. Nevertheless, Dorothy Sayers’ narrative skills are very strongly on display here, and there are some great scenes. The final twist is brilliant (in my opinion). And she includes a delicious, Dickensian policeman’s name in this book, too – Inspector Umpelty. You can’t hate a book with an Inspector Umpelty in it.

Reviews

Watching Lord Peter

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I’m having a blast binge-watching the old BBC Lord Peter Wimsey series, with Ian Carmichael. It occurs to me that these adaptations are now far older than the original books were when I first watched these things. Life is cruel that way.

The philanthropist who posted the videos on YouTube (you can buy the DVDs here, but the price they want is extortionate) posted them in the wrong order, so I had to rearrange them for my own perusal. I watched “Clouds of Witness” first, as God intended, and then “The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club.”

I’m happy to report that they hold up extremely well. The scene design and costuming are unmistakably 1970s (hairstyles are always a giveaway), but within those parameters they’re very well done. Nowadays a lot of that stuff can be faked with CGI, but the BBC did well with real props and settings as they existed at the time.

The best part of the productions, of course, is Ian Carmichael’s portrayal of Lord Peter. He was, as he himself admitted, a little too old for the role. This creates awkward moments, especially in energetic scenes, or when his double chin makes itself too apparent.

And yet he does the role so brilliantly. He’d already played Bertie Wooster, who’s essentially the same character without the brains. The mannerisms are the same. But there’s a gravity underneath it all, and his human sympathy resonates with the viewer.

But my favorite character, I truly believe, is Mervyn Bunter, Lord Peter’s valet (think Jeeves) as portrayed by the Welsh actor Glyn Houston (another actor plays him, sadly, in “The Unpleasantness,” but fortunately that error was corrected in later series).

Houston is splendid in a layered performance. On the surface, his Bunter is the perfect gentleman’s gentleman, discreet, dignified, and proper in speech. But his extremely expressive eyes and delivery manage to convey all this pair’s unspoken history – how he saved his master’s life in the war, and has since nursemaided him through numerous bouts of shell shock and depression. Lord Peter will forever be in his debt, but it’s a matter they never speak about. Words would make it maudlin.

Or Magdalen (though Wimsey was a Balliol man, as I recall).

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Change and Wimsey

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Today’s theme has been transition. Not a major transition in life, though that’s pretty much an everyday occurrence at my age, but a change of internet service, which in perspective shouldn’t loom as large as it seems to.

My old internet provider (which shall remain nameless) is cravenly withdrawing service from my area in a few weeks. So I went over to a cooler, more fashionable ISP, which shall also remain nameless, because if they want a plug they can pay for an ad.

They sent me a box with a modem, and told me about an app I could install on my cell phone, which would – they assured me – walk me through the installation process in about 20 minutes.

I knew it was a lie, of course. Surely they knew it was a lie too.

I floundered with the process for a while before figuring out they were telling me how to hook it all up through a coaxial cable. But I had no coaxial cable. I’ve never had cable in this house.

They don’t make it easy to contact an actual human being through their customer service page, but eventually I bulled my way through. That person, who communicated through online chat and seemed to be equipped with a pre-assembled list of positive affirmations (“I’m on this!” “I won’t fail you!”) soon deduced that I needed a technician to come out and drill a hole in my house. Amazingly, one was available today.

Long (and dull) story short, I now have cable internet. I had hopes of much faster speeds, but so far it seems about comparable to my old DSL service. I could get something better if I were willing to pay for it, of course, but that’s crazy talk.

In other news, I discovered yesterday, to my rapturous delight, that you can watch the old Ian Carmichael Lord Peter Wimsey productions from the BBC on YouTube. The first episode of “Clouds of Witness” is embedded below, for your convenience and cultural enrichment.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Five Red Herrings,’ by Dorothy L. Sayers

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“An official personage like you might embarrass them, don’t you know, but there’s no dignity about me. I’m probably the least awe-inspiring man in Kirkcudbright. I was born looking foolish and every day in every way I am getting foolisher and foolisher.”

The seventh novel in Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey series is The Five Red Herrings, a book that, I fear, has not aged well. The Amazon reviews suggest that most other contemporary readers agree.

Back in the 1930s or so, readers loved their puzzles, and spent time on them. Crossword puzzles were a relatively new innovation, and they took the country by storm. A corollary was the railway timetable mystery, in which the culprit’s alibi is based on a clever manipulation of train times, and the detective must figure out the trick. I assume readers worked at these books the same way they did with their crosswords, attacking them with pencils and pads of paper. Railroad timetables were familiar and interesting to them, because that was how urban people traveled back then.

The town of Kirkcudbright, in the Scottish county of Galloway, is home to a renowned, picturesque artistic colony. These people are generally friendly and amiably competitive, but they all share a loathing of Campbell, a black-bearded semi-talent with a massive, defensive ego, a drinking problem, and a reflexive tendency to resort to his fists.

So no one is much grieved when Campbell’s corpse is found one morning in a river at the foot of a steep bank, below an unfinished painting on an easel surrounded with artist’s supplies. But Lord Peter, examining the site, notices something the police have missed. One object that ought to be there is not there – and it can’t be found. So it’s not an accident but murder, and the investigation begins. Suspects are not lacking. The problem is that they all have alibis that seem solid. Several of them involve travel on trains.

For a reader not willing to work the puzzle by means of transcribing timetables and comparing them closely, reading The Five Red Herrings involves a lot of taking things as given that you don’t quite follow. This makes for some fairly opaque reading for long stretches. But Lord Peter is as amusing as usual, and he does get some good lines off. And there’s some very clever work in the final solution to the mystery.

Most readers today find The Five Red Herrings the least interesting of the Wimsey series. But if you’re reading the books and enjoying them, you should probably not skip it.