Oh, man, are these books good or what?! The first Dorothy Sayers I read was Gaudy Night, on Nancy Pearl’s recommendation, and it became one of my favorite books ever. I’ve been reading the others very slowly, because there’s not many and she’s been dead for a long time. Just finished Murder Must Advertise, which despite having no Harriet is just an amazingly good book - was I the only one who didn’t know fashionable people did a lot of coke in the 30’s in Britain? (I’m afraid I’ve read all the best ones, now, and have only the so-so ones to finish - entirely by accident, I’m afraid. I’ve read Strong Poison, and The Nine Tailors, and Murder Must Advertise, and Gaudy Night. They’re the cream of the crop, aren’t they?)
So, who else lusts after Lord Peter? Are the movies any good? I heard there were radio versions - are they available?
The upshot of which was that I did wind up buying both sets of the DVDs in full and have enjoyed watching them many times. But there are some problems to both:
Ian Carmichael is too old for Wimsey. In an interview on one DVD, he tells of how he had been trying to get the series made since the mid 60’s, so I don’t suppose you can blame him for his age, but there it is. He does a decent job otherwise.
I really like Harriet Walter’s Harriet Vane in the other series, but it took me awhile to get used to Petherbridge’s Wimsey. And I simply cannot believe that the young man who plays Bunter here is the Mervyn Bunter who served with Wimsey in WWI, saved his life, and has served him faithfully since. (I prefer to think of him as Martin Bunter, Mervyn’s nephew or young cousin, who took over for him when the elder Bunter retired to open a pub.)
Of all the mysteries on video, Gaudy Night seems to me to be the most disappointing. It’s a bare bones of the main plot and the romance. Nearly everything else I enjoyed in the novel has been cut out: the subplots with the girls, Wimsey’s nephew, the sonnet, the chess set.
When that lovely chess set is smashed up in the novel, it upsets me more than most murders in other mystery stories.
If you read the book “Nine Tailors” you will also get a quick tutorial on the art of Change Ringing.
I have just finished reading two of her Wimsey short stories , Striding Folly and The Haunted Policeman. The latter story takes place on the day that Lord Peter and Harriet Vane’s first son is born.
My favourite is still Murder Must Advertise. I mean, it’s a testament to her that I’ve worked in advertising/marketing and a lot of the relationships, dialogue and atmosphere is correct to this day.
Ooh, Borders sent me this crazy coupon around the holidays-50% off ANY DVD set in the store. I got the 1980s productions of Gaudy Night, Have his Carcase and the one where Harriet is at the gallows. Wonderful.
Edited because I frocked up the title of my favourite Sayers book.
I think you’ve got all the best ones there. The rest are more frivolous. Sayers consciously tried, over the years, to write deeper and better books and to make Wimsey a more complex character, and your list is mostly later ones.
If you plan to read The Nine Tailors, you’re going to need this thread:
I have always found Dorothy [del]Bayer[/del] Sayers’ :dubious: works a bit hard to read as opposed to Agatha Christie. I didn’t begin to like her work until I read other non-Peter Wimsey books.
Personally I enjoy them all but they do change through time. The early ones are distinctly simpler with fewer distractions from the mystery element. Much more like Agatha Christie
If you can it’s worth reading them in order, from Whose Body? through to Busman’s Honeymoon. I even enjoyed Thrones, Dominations, the LPW book by Jill Paton Walsh that came out in 1998 that showed Peter and Harriet after their marriage and honeymoon.
Of the Dorothy L Sayers (never forget the “L”) novels that you haven’t read I suggest Clouds of Witness, where you get to meet Peter’s brother and sister, and Five Red Herrings - not the best novel or mystery but I love the Scottish setting. You will also want *Have His Carcase * as it fits between *Strong Poison * and *Gaudy Night *in the development of Peter and Harriet’s relationship.
Oh, I love them. Dorothy Sayers is the all-time queen of mysteries. And I like reading her theological books, and --much to my surprise–her essay on education sparked an actual movement.
For some reason I don’t really like film mysteries, so I have never seen the TV versions.
Me! Me! Me! I love them all! I think Sayers, like Marsh, combined good mysteries with good writing. Christie… well, I think her plots were excellent, but the quality of writing left something to be desired.
I have to admit that I really like the TV series as well, with Edward Petherbridge (I think) as Peter Wimsey. Of all the characters, though, the one that endears himself to me the most is Bunter. I just like his totally unflappable style.
I remember trying to read them as slowly as possible when I first discovered them, but it’s so hard. And no matter how hard you try, you will get to the end too quickly. I swear, the relatively small number of Peter Wimsey books in the world is one of the great injustices of all time.
One thing I can share about the Sayers books – for an embarrassingly long time, I didn’t get what a “carcase” was. And I’m an educated adult, really! I thought it was a “car case,” which I figured was perhaps a type of small suitcase for short trips, and sized to fit nicely in the trunk of a car, say a Daimler for example. Bunter always seemed to have a lot of luggage to deal with, and the book does take place at a resort. When the light bulb finally went on, I think I yelled “Oh, it’s a CARCASS!” out loud, in public.
Don’t skip the short stories! Sayers wrote well in the short form too; one of her non-Wimsey shorts, “Suspicion”, has been anthologized repeatedly, and for good reason. The last sentence…
The titles alone of the Wimsey stories are marvelous: “The Abominable History of the Man With Copper Fingers”, “The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba”, “The Incredible Elopement of Lord Peter Wimsey”, and a couple of punning titles you have to read the story to understand.
Anyway, the Lord Peter short stories are all together in the collection “Lord Peter”, and I see from Amazon there is now a “Complete Stories” collection with all the Wimsey stories and the ones featuring her only other series character, a clever but not very interesting wine salesman named Montague Egg. I trust it also has the standalone stories like the above-mentioned “Suspicion”.
Oh, and there are a couple of Sayers biographies, as well as collections of her letters; apparently they’re all out of print, but check libraries and used-book dealers. She had an interesting life. The respectable biography is “Dorothy L. Sayers” by James Brabazon, who knew Sayers and had the cooperation of her family. An older bio you can skip is “Such A Strange Lady”, notable only for being the first to reveal the major secret of Sayers’ life.
Count me as loving the Wimsey mysteries. My favorite short story is actually the one about the wine tasting: “The Bibulous Business of a Matter of Taste.”
I’ve loved them for years. I particularly enjoy Busman’s Honeymoon. My copy has a short piece called Talboys, which occurs after Lady Peter has presented our hero with three children (all boys).
My copies of the various Lord Peter novels have gotten so tattered, I’ve started replacing them. As I was buying a new copy of Gaudy Night recently, the guy ringing me up at the bookstore pointed me out to a coworker of his, a fellow Sayers fan. We got into quite a conversation about the difficulty in particular with *Gaudy Night * of all the Latin and French – as she said, “I never thought when I read a mystery that it would help to have read Latin at Oxford first!”
I’ve yet to find another classic mystery author whose work I enjoy as much. The Nine Tailors in particular is such a vivid description of village life as well as a really good mystery.
