Is there anything I can read that will REALLY fill in for Peter Wimsey?

Cafe Society
21

I second the recommendation for Margery Allingham’s books about Albert Campion, who like Wimsey is a charming, upper-class sophisticate who hides behind a facade of being an obtuse silly ass. It’s almost an alter ego, Scarlet Pimpernel type of thing. He’s clever, self-deprecating, mysterious, and also a touch dashing now and then.

However, despite their similarities I like Campion way more than Wimsey. A big plus is that Allingham didn’t fall in love with Campion like a drooling bluestocking fangirl the way Sayers did with Wimsey – and there’s certainly no Mary Sue like Harriet. Heh, I guess you can tell that, like Exapno Mapcase, I kinda detest Wimsey. So you might wanna take my recommendation with a grain of salt.

But if you’re going for a likeable character, I will wholeheartedly without a drop of reservation recommend the Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout. I agree that they have an American sensibility, but there’s also a strain of the English cosy feel to them; part of Stout’s genius was to combine the American hard-boiled with the English cosy style. And there’s simply no more likeable, witty character in the mystery canon than Archie Goodwin, who narrates the books and is Wolfe’s legman, employee, partner, cockleburr, and chief cattle prod.

Between Wolfe’s book-loving, multilingual, eccentric sophistication and Archie’s breezy, snarky romanticism, the pair are a unique treat to read. Plus there’s the delight of stepping into a New York where women wore gloves and men wore hats. (The books take place anywhere from 1934 - 1977; Stout always wrote them as contemporary, though the characters thankfully don’t age. But most of them are from the 40s - 60s, and there’s a historical charm to them.)

Rube E. Tuesday, I gotta agree that Archie and Wolfe would’ve rolled their combined four eyes at the Wimsey/Vane set. At least Wolfe would be able to fling some good insults at them in their oh-so-pretentious Greek – and unlike them, he’d use his own verbiage, rather than quoting others’ words back and forth. :smiley:

22

I checked it out of the library and just couldn’t read it. As if being poor is an excuse for killing anyone. I hate her so much now. I loved her cast of characters–I even put up with Deb. But Helen was the coolest–no one else could reach Havers the way she did. No one else understood Lynley etc.

It’s Deb I can’t stand. I would have cheered the sniper on, if he had shot Deb “I’m just an insipid, emotionally labile and retarded fuckwit who sleeps with the wrong men, repeatedly.”
Hate her.
OP might want to try Catherine Aird. Not Whimsey, but still good.

23

I’m reading a collection of Connie Willis’s short fiction right now, The Winds of Marble Arch, and she has this to say in the introduction:

I sympathize, **Zsofia **- I only discovered Dorothy Sayers earlier this year, and I fell in love with Lord Peter also.

24

Aaaah…Peter and Harriet. If what you’re looking for is what Sayers described as “a love story with detective interruptions,” then I recommend the following. “Busman’s Honeymoon” is my favorite book, and all of these make, to quote Lord Peter himself, “a very interesting addition…but…a hell of a rotten substitute” for the originals.

First, if you haven’t read the two later Peter and Harriet short stories found in Sayers’ “Lord Peter” short story collection, you should definitely read them. I also recommend the Jill Paton Walsh books that C K Dexter Haven mentioned.

Lindsay Davis has a series of romantic mysteries set in ancient rome and featuring informer Marcus Didius Falco and the love of his life Helena Justina. They are the closest thing I have ever found to Peter and Harriet, and are pretty much what the Wimsey’s would have been had they lived circa 70 B.C.

Agatha Christie wrote a number of mystery romances, but you have to be careful, because your typical Marple or Poirot won’t do it. For true romance, I recommend the following:

“The Secret Adversary” (features Tommy and Tuppence – if you like them, you can follow them through four more books)
“Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?” (a.k.a. “The Boomerang Clue”)
“The Pale Horse”
“Crooked House”
“Death Comes As the End”
“Endless Night”

Among Josephine Tey’s books, “Brat Farrar” has the right amount of romance.

Finally someone mentioned Dick Francis. While I enjoy his books, they are typically heavier on the violence than the romance, however his most recent paperback, “Under Orders” is absolutely fabulous, and had me sighing like the best of Sayers.

25

Ngaio Marsh is awesome, but stay away from the later books starring Alleyn’s son. Not so good (but you can read dozens of her books before you get to the son). Martha Grimes’ Richard Jury is great (I have a crush on the moody, angry Brian Macalvie). Elizabeth George started strong but I can’t stand her now–I would happily punch out all of her main characters).

Rex Stout is good for everything that ails you. Josephine Tey is excellent.

For modern English mystery romance I like the Meredith Mitchell/Alan Markby books by Anna Granger and Deborah Crombie’s Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James books.

26

Obviously, no one is going to out-Wimsey Whimsey. When I came to the end of the Sayers series, I was in the same situation your are. I tried the local fare and they all fell short. Campion was no Champion, the Jury is still out on…but you get the idea.

Instead I traveled around the world looking for some and found some good ones. In China the Judge Dee mysteries are great, as are Upfield’s Australian half-cast Napolean Bonaparte mysteries. If you have not read the Charlie Chan mysteries, you are missing a treat. I also enjoyed the Mr. and Mrs. North mysteries which are very uniquely New York is Peter uniquely Brit.

None of them are Wimsey and his lady fair, but none could be.

27

Nobody can really do that job. But I do like the Allingham books a lot, and Ngaio Marsh is very good. IMO those are the closest on this list.

I read Elizabeth Peters, but I don’t like her a lot. I’m annoyed by her over-the-top parody of romance novels, for one thing. I agree that P. D. James is too dry for endurance! I quite like Inspector Jury, but he’s not at all the same as Wimsey.

28

my apologies–I was dismissive of PD James, when I meant to be of Martha Grimes. It is Grimes whom I cannot read after about her 9th book.

James’ Inspector Wexford is great. For excellent mystery writing (no whimsy, though) try Ruth Rendell. Dorothy Simpson is also good, but in the Wexford vein.
How about Ellery Queen? Margaret Yorke?

Now I want to read a mystery!

29

I love Martha Grimes and just finished “Dust”. I gave it 5 stars on my “Goodbooks” page.

30

Oh, yay! I get to make an original recommendation. Seriously, by the time I come along in these threads, there’s usually about four posters that have already said what I was going to say. But not this time! :wink:

My recommendation is Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes books, starting with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. They are a believable extension of Conan Doyle’s canon – assuming you’ll accept Holmes would be caught dead with a woman, ever – and they are plot-driven and entertaining, not the usual “deerstalker and ‘elementary my dear Watson’” crap that you normally find in Holmesian pastiches. And because they are set late in Holmes’s life (after the Conan Doyle stories ended in 1914), for setting and time they have much in common with Sayers – mostly England, mostly 1920s and 30s.

31

As a Sayers fan myself, I too found myself cast adrift when I had read all her mysteries over and over until I couldn’t stand them anymore. :slight_smile: While I never really found a similar series that pleased me as much (i.e., an aristocratic amateur detective), I eventually fell upon a more-than-adequate substitute in Reginald Hill’s Dalziel/Pascoe mysteries. What attracted me in both Sayers and Hill is the wit, intelligence and pithiness of their writing and their vivid characterizations, even down to the minor characters.

32

I have to agree that there’s no one quite like Sayers. Don’t overlook the Wimsey short stories and her non-Wimsey fiction–lots of short stories (“Suspicion” and “Blood Sacrifice” are particularly good) and one novel, The Documents in the Case.

I can heartily agree with the recommendation for Rex Stout–not that Stout is any substitute for Sayers, but he’s excellent in his own way. Stout, Sayers and Conan Doyle are the only mystery writers I’ve liked well enough to track down not only their non-series mysteries, but their non-mystery fiction, and in Sayers’ case some of her nonfiction and poetry as well.

If you like the humor and erudition of Sayers, try Edmund Crispin (The Moving Toyshop, The Long Divorce). Crispin’s detective is an Oxford don named Gervaise Fen, whose idea of a fun pub game is “Detestable Characters in Fiction” or “Awful Lines from Shakespeare”. The Long Divorce has a nice romantic subplot, not involving Fen, who’s happily married.

PD James is a writer I admire but don’t much like. Very good but also pretty depressing IMHO.

Amanda Cross’s Kate Fansler novels have their moments.

33

Have you read the short stories? Admittedly, they won’t last long, but there are two post-wedding mysteries. One takes place on the night Harriet delivers their first son. The next is several years later when the family is at home in the country.

StG