This is the book in which Peter Wimsey falls in love with Harriet Vane when she is on trial for murder and makes it his business to prove her innocence. It’s a corny enough premise, but it’s so well done that it feels very fresh. Dorothy L. Sayers writes so well that for me any flaws are instantly forgivable – if I notice them at all. The old jibe about Snobbery With Violence has some truth here and Sayers is plainly in love with her creation, but none of that mattered to me. She creates such memorable and believable characters and writes with such elegance and wit that the whole thing was a pleasure. Wimsey himself is full of verbose charm (as Harriet remarks, “If anyone ever marries you, it wil be for the pleasure of hearing you talk piffle”), the wonderful Miss Climpson is on top form and a dinner party at Duke’s Denver, for example, is a beautifully understated portrait of a sort of antique, posh Twitter in which people have very definite opinions about matters of which they are wholly ignorant.
Dorothy L. Sayers is comfortably my favourite Golden Age author. This is one of her best – so much so that I now want to re-read the whole Wimsey canon. Very, very warmly recommended.
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