The Incredible Elopement of Lord Peter Wimsey by Dorothy L. Sayers (1958)

 The Incredible Elopement of Lord Peter Wimsey

About the author: See this Wikipedia article.

Major characters:

• Langley, a British professor
• Standish Wetherall, American physician
• Alice Wetherall, his wife
• Martha, their housekeeper/cook
• Lord Peter Wimsey, a.k.a. "The wizard"
• Bunter, his manservant; a.k.a. "Juan"

Locale: The Pyranees (border of France and Spain)

Synopsis: British Professor Langley is visiting the Pyranees when he hears an old acquantance of his, Dr. Standish Wetherall, has a mountain home nearby. Standish is married to Langley's old flame, Alice (now Alice Wetherall). The locals warn Langley to stay away, as Alice is "enchanted".

Langley visits anyway to find Alice is just an unrecognizable wreck - gaunt, hair falling out, barely able to speak or feed herself. Standish taunts Langley about how he likes her now, and wouldn't he like to be with her again?

Two men appear in the village and take a cottage. The locals are frightened by their mystical ways, calling one "the wizard" and his companion "Juan".  A boy visits them and finds they are indeed Christians, which leads to their acceptance by the Catholic locals. 

The Wetherall's housekeeper, Martha, visits and the wizard performs strange rites and incantations in order to heal Alice. He gives Martha a supply of communion-like wafers and instructs her to give them to Alice daily. This leads to a gradual improvement in her condition. 

SPOILER AHEAD - highlight to reveal: The wizard (Lord Peter) reveals Alice suffers from a thyroid problem, and Standish had intentionally withheld the needed medicine as revenge for her previous relationship with Langley. Lord Peter and Juan help her escape (the elopement) from Standish and reunite with Langley.

Mini Review: I have no idea of the medical veracity of the story, but it makes a good read. The theatrics of the incantations and rituals are quite amusing, even featuring trained (?) cats. Some unique aspects: no one is murdered, and a marriage gets broken up intentionally. 

The Image in the Mirror by Dorothy L. Sayers (1936)

About the author: See this Wikipedia article.

Locale: London and environs

Synopsis: Lord Peter Wimsey takes notice of Robert Duckworthy at his club, who is 1) reading Lord Peter's book, and 2) using both hands to turn the pages. Unusual. Lord Peter strikes up a conversation with him, and Duckworthy reveals that his internals are all reversed, with organs all on the opposite side than usual. What's more, Lord Peter is astounded when Duckworthy says this condition was not from birth, it happened all at once, when a bomb shelter he was in took a direct hit; not only reversing his innards, but causing him to stumble about in a daze for several days.

Duckworthy relates many strange things happened during the dazed period: a woman unknown to him claims to have been with him in the bomb shelter. His fiancée breaks their engagement after seeing him out with another woman. When approaching a mirror his reflection suddenly turned about and walked away from him. Lefts and rights are all mixed up. Then his photograph appears in the newspaper, found in the purse of murdered Jessie Haynes, another woman unknown to him. The police come to question Duckworthy, and Lord Peter convinces them to hold off on an arrest.

Lord Peter sets out to check all the aspects of Duckworthy's story - and they all check 100%. His appendix had once been removed, and indeed, from the "wrong" side. The mirror is found and examined and operating as expected. People who knew him since childhood are questioned. Lord Peter gradually forms an explanation which frees Duckworthy from suspicion.

Review: This is a nice bite-size Lord Peter story, perfect for consuming in one sitting. Mirrors are strange things anyways*, and the one in the story a bit stranger than usual. Lord Peter reveals a scientific reason for the backwards-innards, which I won't reveal here as it is a bit of a spoiler.

*We all know mirrors reverse left to right, but not top to bottom. Why? My pet theory is because our eyes are set side-by-side, and if they were set one over the other, then mirrors would act the opposite way. So there.

Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers (1932)

dustjackets.com

Major characters:

• Harriet Vane, writer of detective stories
• Lord Peter Wimsey
• Julian Perkins, a teacher
• Paul Alexis, a gigolo (deceased)
• Mrs. Flora Weldon, who believed herself engaged to Paul Alexis
• Henry Weldon, her son, a farmer
• Haviland Martin, who was in the vicinity
• Mrs. Morecambe, driving a Bentley
• Antoine, another gigolo
• William Bright, owner of a razor

Locale: Wilvercombe, on the coast of England

Synopsis: Harriet Vane is hiking along the coast in a remote area and comes across a dead body - his throat cut - perched on a rock at the tide line. She retrieves a razor as being the likely weapon, and walks to the nearest town for help, encountering hiker Julian Perkins along the way.

After reporting the body, Harriet stays at the posh Hotel Resplendent. The hotel employs four "gigolos", or professional dance partners for the guests. They are Antoine, Paul Alexis, Doris, and Charis. The police believe the deceased to be Paul Alexis, but have yet to recover the body. Hotel guest Flora Weldon is distraught, she had believed she was to marry Paul Alexis, but the other gigolos suggest that ha ha, that was just his usual line to the middle-aged ladies; she should have known that.

Lord Peter Wimsey arrives and in between marriage proposals to Harriet takes on the tracing of the razor. He finds it was last in the possession of a William Bright. Perhaps Bright and Perkins are the same person? 

The situation is complicated when it is found that Alexis believed himself to be Russian royalty, awaiting a return to mother Russia. A series of coded messages between him and someone in Russia adds to the intrigue.

Narrowing down the suspects is pretty straightforward, there aren't too many - but it is quite a puzzle to place them in space and time to have done the murder. One by one, Wimsey's theories are found to be incorrect.

Review: This starts off in the vein of John Dickson Carr, with Harriet Vane finding a body perched on a rock surrounded by smooth sand, with two sets of footprints: hers and the deceased. The episode of the discovery of the body is quite amusing:

Harriet Vane, a writer of detective stories, is puzzled when confronted with a real body; which never happens to writers of fiction who are trying to pass off knowing what they are writing about. What should she do? Well, what would the heroic investigator of her detective stories, Robert Templeton, do? He would do thus-and-so; so that is what I shall do. So now we have fictional Harriet Vane looking to her fictional character Robert Templeton, as she encounters a real (to her, but ultimately fictional) body. But wait, the onion has another layer! We have real detective story writer Dorothy L. Sayers writing of fictional detective story writer Harriet Vane looking to her own fictional detective Robert Templeton. Oh, my head!

The plot includes a secret message encoded using the Playfair Cipher, and includes an excellent description of how to encrypt and decrypt messages using it. I compared it to a description I had in a textbook, and it is not only correct, but explained much better using everyday language. (The wikipedia article linked above also cites Have His Carcase as a reference).

The repeated testing of theories by placing the suspects in time and space wore on and got a bit tiring when breaking down events in small intervals. The murderer is indeed found at the end.

See also this 2011 review and this 2020 review by Bev Hankins on My Reader's Block.

Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers (1930)

Major characters:

• Miss Harriet Vane, writer of detective stories
• Philip Boyes, the deceased boyfriend
• Norman Urquhaut, attorney, Philip's cousin
• Ryland Vaughan, Philip's friend
• Rosanna Wrayburn, Norman's aunt, an invalid
• Nurse Caroline Booth, Rosanna's nurse, a spiritualism enthusiast
• Inspector Charles Parker
• Lord Peter Wimsey
• Sir Impey Biggs, Harriet Vane's attorney
• Mervyn Bunter, Lord Peter's butler
• Hon. Frederick Arbuthnot
• Miss Katherine "Kitty" Climson, head of The Cattery
• Miss Joan Murchison, a typist at The Cattery

Locale: England

Synopsis: The book opens with Miss Harriet Vane on trial for murder of her former live-in boyfriend, Philip Boyes. He had died of arsenic poisoning, and circumstantial evidence points to Vane. She had made regular purchases of arsenic which coincided with Boyes' periods of illness, eventually resulting in his death. Her explanation is that it was research for her new book on poisons, Death in the Pot.*

The trial ends with a hung jury. A second trial will be scheduled. Lord Peter Wimsey, who attended the trial, is convinced Vane is innocent, and vows to use the remaining time to prove it; as well as enable their marriage. Three big questions: Who had a motive? If Harriet didn't do it, who did? And how was the poison administered?

Wimsey seeks out help from his secret detective agency, The Cattery - ostensibly a typing agency but populated by women who have various detecting skills. 

* Biblical reference from a suspected poisoning incident recorded in 2 Kings 4:40

Review:

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. When reading Sayers, I am always torn between rushing through to find out what happens vs. lingering over the perfect expressive language. 

The episodes of the ladies from The Cattery doing their undercover work are hilarious - as Miss Joan Murchison endures a fervent evangelical religious service in order to learn lockpicking, and Miss Kitty Climson infiltrates the home of Rosanna Wrayburn and conducts a fake seance to discover the location of a missing will.

Harriet Vane has but brief appearances at beginning and end - setting the stage for a marriage to Wimsey? Not sure, I should be reading these in order!

Also see this review by Bev Hankins on My Reader's Block.

PS> The paperback cover illustration above has no relation to the story.

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers (1936)

dustjackets.com

Major characters:

• Miss Harriet Vane
• Lord Peter Wimsey
• Violet Cattermole, who drank too much
• Reggie Pomfret, admirer of Harriet Vane
• Jukes, a dishonest servant
• Lord Saint-George, Peter Wimsey's nephew
• Miss Newland, who almost drowned
• Annie Wilson, a "scout" (custodian)
• Arthur Robinson, Annie Wilson's former husband, deceased

Locale: Oxford, England

Synopsis: Harriet Vane, a writer of detective stories, is off to a Shrewsbury College reunion, which will be topped with a party called 'The Gaudy'. Meanwhile, two things are happening in her life: she - and others - receive a series of anonymous letters with vague threats, and Lord Peter Wimsey (LPW) is continuing his campaign of seeking to marry her.

Harriet gets involved trying to find the writer of the poison-pen letters, who not only writes the anonymous letters, but also commits acts of vandalism at the college. Harriet catches a man climbing in over the wall - Reggie Pomfret - who turns out to become a friend and admirer. Harriet also gets to know Peter Wimsey's nephew, Lord Saint-George, who tends to run up a lot of debts for LPW to bail him out of.

Harriet wishes LPW were there to assist in finding the culprit, but he is off on various travels. Things come to a head when Miss Newland, terrorized by the anonymous letters, attempts to drown herself. LPW finally arrives on the scene and the two story lines of the anonymous letters and the repeated marriage proposals are finally resolved.

Review: This book starts off quite slowly with long descriptions of the college campus as the reunion approaches, replete with some some undefined acronyms with mystify this reader. A visit to this Wikpedia page explains that J.C.R. means Junior Common Room and S.C.R. means Senior Common Room - which not only refer to an actual room, but also the members of that room.

The anonymous letters are treated more of a nuisance than a real problem at the beginning, until the real harm of the vandalism begins.

I was waiting - waiting - for something to happen to kick the story into a murder mystery. After a long time, a body is apparently found hanging; and I thought this was the point - but alas, it was not a real body but a dummy. I was teased again when it appeared Miss Newland was a murder victim, but no, she survives quite well. There is one death - but it occured prior to the story line, and is dispensed of with a couple of sentences at the denouement as a part of the motive explanation.

This has been described as a novel with a detective story within, and it is. The happenings at the college are told in great detail - sometimes too much detail - and the action moves very slowly but steadily.

Lord Peter Wimsey has but a minor role in the book, appearing only at the end to figure out the anonymous letter mystery and provide the dénouement.


See also this review by Bev Hankins on My Reader's Block.

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers (1933)

dustjackets.com

About the author:  See this Wikipedia article.

Major characters:

Staff of Pym's Publicity:

• Victor Dean, deceased from falling down the stairs
• Death Bredon, the new copy writer
• Other copy writers: Mr. Ingleby and Miss Meteyard
• Copy Chiefs: Mr. Hankin and Mr. Armstrong
• Mr. Pym, owner 
• Mr. Willis
• Mr. Tallboy, group manager for the Nutrax account
• Assistants: Miss Rossiter and Miss Parton
• Mr. Prout, photographer

Others:

• Pamela Dean, the late Victor Dean's sister
• Dian de Momerie, wealthy dilettante who runs with the party crowd
• Major Tod Milligan, drug distributor
• Inspector Charles Parker
• Lord Peter Wimsey

Locale: England

Synopsis:  Pym's Publicity is a busy advertising agency with a chaotic staff. Between floors is an iron spiral staircase, which some have always considered unsafe. Copy writer Victor Dean has just fallen down these stairs and died as the story begins, and Death Bredon is coming in as his replacement. Bredon is curious about the incident, and finding a note from Dean suggesting something is fishy at Pym's, leads him to suspect murder. He seeks to learn about it, and strikes up a friendship with Dean's sister, Pamela. 

Through Pamela, Bredon is introducted to the drug party crowd of enchanting Dian de Momerie. Bredon attends a party in harlequin costume, and begins a teasing on-again, off-again relationship with de Momerie; always remaining in his costume to hide his identity. He becomes a legend, appearing without warning.

Bredon finds the connection between the party crowd and Pym's is the method of distributing drugs; which led to the murder of Dean, the man who knew too much.

Review:

A very nice page-turner, I did not mention Lord Peter in the synopsis as it would be a spoiler. 

The sudden revelation of the identity of Death Bredon came as a surprise to me, I should have seen it coming.

The chaotic activities at Pym's are sometimes hard to follow, with a parade of every employee challenging the reader to keep track of who's who. The descriptions show some of the true absurdities of corporate life. 

Much is made of the fact that Victor Dean did not relinquish his hold on a book during his fatal fall, yet this turned out to be a big red herring which never was brought up again.

The interplay of Bredon (as the harlequin) and Dian de Momerie is rather fairy-tale, especially the forest scene with him playing the pan pipes in a tree to Dian below. Dian becomes enchanted with this mysterious figure, reminding me of Luisa and the bandit El Gallo of The Fantasticks.

The chapter "Unexpected Conclusion of a Cricket Match" is a highly detailed play-by-play of the game, which didn't mean anything to me - not being familiar with the game - but the ending of the game did provide a plot element as a catalyst to wrap the story up.

The method the drug dealers use in dealing with security risks gets a bit repetitive, send them out on the sidewalk and a convenient truck jumps the sidewalk and runs over them (happens 3 times).

The denouement explains the involvement of Pym's and the drug trade, a clever little strategem involving the use of the advertisements themselves, a World War II -era espionage staple.

PS> If  you enjoy books set in advertising agencies, also try The Hand of Power by Edgar Wallace, which features Pawter's Publicity Services.

Also please see this review by Bev Hankins on My Reader's Block.

Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers (1927)

dustjackets.com

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. - Hebrews 12:1

About the author:  See this Wikipedia article.

Major characters:

• Inspector Charles Parker
• Lord Peter Wimsey
• Gerald Wimsey, the Duke of Denver
• Lady Mary Wimsey, their sister, engaged to...
• Captain Denis Cathcart, the victim
• Miss Lydia Cathcart, Denis' aunt
• James Fleming, Cathcart's manservant
• Mervyn Bunter, Lord Peter's butler
• George Goyles
• Hon. Frederick Arbuthnot
• Col. & Mrs. Marchbanks
• Mr. & Mrs. Pettigrew-Robinson
• The Dowager Duchess of Denver, Lord Peter's mother
• Farmer Grimethorpe, who will loose the dogs on you if you look at his wife

Locale:

Synopsis: Lord Peter Wimsey is on holiday along with faithful butler, the Archie Goodwin-like Mervyn Bunter. They suddenly see news in the paper that his brother, Gerald Wimsey, the Duke of Denver, has been arrested on suspicion of murder. It seems he was found crouching over the dead body of Captain Denis Cathcart - who was engaged to Lady Mary Wimsey (Peter and Gerald's sister). Even worse, they had been seen in an argument earlier in the evening. No, wait, it gets even more worse - Gerald's gun is found beside the body. An expensive jeweled cat pin is found nearby.

There is a ray of hope - footprints are found leading away from the crime scene, to marks where a motorcycle/sidecar combo has departed. Lord Peter manages to track down the maker of the footprints in an underground socialist pub, and winds up with a bullet in his shoulder for his efforts. Then he and Bunter follow clues across a soupy moor - at night - in the fog - and fall into a pit of quicksand. They are rescued, and brought to a nearby hut of Farmer Grimethorpe, who has previously loosed the dogs on Wimsey. It seems Grimethorpe is intensly jealous of anyone who looks at, or speaks to, his stunning wife.

Gerald comes up to trial with all the pomp required of a peer trial. Things quickly start going downhill in the courtroom, for as every lawyer learns on day one of law school: Never ask a witness a question if you do not already know how they will answer!

Review: A very enjoyable and humorous Wimsey. Much ado is spent sorting out different versions of who-did-what-when in the house. The quick fact finding trip to Paris is fun. The adventure of falling into the bog on moor is very Sherlock Holmes-ish, and the rescue to the Grimethorpe farm turns the key in finding out what really happened. The buildup to the elaborate trial is fun with all its associated pageantry, and the trial itself falls apart quickly in Erle Stanley Gardner fashion as hapless lawyers attempt, unsuccessfully, to control unruly witnesses who blurt out all sorts of damaging details. The dangling loose end of the tragic Grimethorpe couple is resolved nicely at the very end. Unfortunately, the Dowager Duchess only makes one brief appearance in the story. 

Note: A floor plan of the house is provided for the reader to follow along, and the Gun Room is mislabelled as "Gin Room", which I admit would be a lot more fun.

Please also see this review by Bev Hankins on My Reader's Block.

Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers, 1923

dustjackets.com

About the author: See this Wikipedia article.

Major characters:

• Alfred Thipps, an architect with a bath
• An unnamed body found in his bathtub
• Sir Reuben Levy, a missing Hebrew financier
• Sir Julian Freke, doctor in charge of the hospital dissecting room
• Inspector Sugg
• Inspector Charles Parker
• Lord Peter Wimsey
• Mervyn Bunter, Lord Peter's butler
• The Dowager Duchess of Denver, Lord Peter's mother

Locale: England

Synopsis: Lord Peter Wimsey is informed of a strange event by his mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver - being the finding of a naked (except for a pair of pince-nez glasses) man in the bathtub of architect Alfred Thipps; who has no idea who it may be. Meanwhile, Sir Reuben Levy, a Hebrew financier, disappeared at the same time - leaving evidence that he walked out of his house naked.

Hmmm. The authorities (Inspector Sugg and Inspector Parker), as well as Wimsey, immediately try to connect the two. Is the man in the bathtub Sir Reuben? There is a superficial resemblance but they can't quite make the connection.

They eventually confirm the bathtub body is not Sir Reuben. Unfortunate. Now they have two mysteries, not one. Wimsey tries to trace the bathtub body, and Parker tries to find Sir Reuben. No dice. They swap tasks, that doesn't help either.

Review: My first delve into Dorothy Sayers. Oh, my, I am still out of breath. Prepare yourself for paragraph-length sentences, and page-length paragraphs! Some are just astounding:

"Of course, we're all Jews nowadays, and they wouldn't have minded so much if he'd pretended to be something else, like that Mr. Simons we met at Mrs. Porchester's who always tells everybody that he got his nose in Italy at the Renaissance, and who claims to be descended somehow or other from La Bella Simonetta - so foolish, you know, dear - as if anybody believed it; and I'm sure some Jews are very good people, and personally I'd much rather they believed something, though of course it must be very inconvenient, what with not working on Saturdays and circumcising the poor little babies and everything depending on the new moon and that funny kind of meat they have with such a slang-sounding name, and never being able to have bacon for breakfast." - The Dowager Duchess

And after "listening" to Lord Peter Wimsey. I just knew that voice from somewhere - then it hit me - he talks just like Philo Vance! (See my S. S. Van Dine blog):

• The terminal letter "g" hasn't been invented yet, since he drops every one of them (havin', bettin', goin', gettin' etc). 
• Statements of fact turned into rhetorical questions by appending 'what'? (It's ten o'clock already, what?)
• Favorite phrase (same as Philo's): "Thanks, awfully."
• Strange contractions: "S'pose" and not-quite-APA: "ain't"
• Commenting by use of poetic quotations

But perhaps everyone talked like that in the 1920's. This book preceded the Philo Vances by a few years, so she certainly didn't copy him.

This is a rollicking story which does not let up. There are plenty of humorous asides and random references to people outside the story which adds to the general confusion.

Also see this review by Bev Hankins on My Reader's Block.