Review: Clouds of Witness (1926) – Dorothy L. Sayers

A renowned detective whose own brother, a Duke, is on trial for murdering his sister’s fiancé — that’s the position in which Lord Peter Wimsey finds himself in Clouds of Witness. This was the second Lord Peter mystery and the one that brought Sayers to the attention of the British public, largely because of its famous trial of the Duke of Denver in the House of Lords. (A British lord could only be tried by his peers.)

With almost too many clues, this book starts as a routine detective story, as Lord Peter and his friend Inspector Charles Parker spend their time tracing footprints and motorcycle tracks. But when Parker follows a clue to Paris and Peter begins to search the moors near the Duke’s hunting lodge, the mystery gains momentum and races to its climax in the House of Lords.

There is a lot of charm in Sayers’s writing. The friendship between Wimsey and Parker is nicely developed as is Parker’s growing attraction to Peter’s sister, Lady Mary. Sayers also depicts, with much humor, British attitudes of the times towards French manners and customs, as well as the upper class’s flirtation with Socialism (Lady Mary is member of the London Socialist Club). Some of the characters’ names are outright Dickensian, especially Mr. Grimethorpe of Griders Hole, and the trial lawyers Wrinching and Glibbery. And, as in many mysteries of the Golden Age, the echoes of World War I still reverberate. (The fiancé, Denis Cathcart, lost his fortune as a result of investments in France and Russia that disappeared during the war.)

Not the best of the Lord Peter mysteries, but a good introduction to Wimsey, his family (notably Lady Mary and the Dowager Duchess), and the usual cast of Sayers’s characters, with the unusual addition of two femme fatales.

Review: Strong Poison (1930) – Dorothy L. Sayers

Rereading Strong Poison always makes me feel like I’m visiting with long-lost friends. Here they are again, the Sayers repertory company: Lord Peter, his valet, the ever-efficient Bunter, Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard, the Dowager Duchess of Denver, the somewhat ridiculous but useful Freddy Arbuthnot, the masterful barrister, Impey Biggs, and the bibulous reporter, Salcombe Hardy. And, of course, the gentle humor and not-so-gentle erudition of the author.

This is the first book in the four part sequence that features Lord Peter Wimsey’s romance with Harriet Vane. But the romance doesn’t overshadow the mystery, which is an intriguing one. Who poisoned Harriet’s former lover, Philip Boyes? And how was the poison administered? Although Harriet does seem to know altogether too much about arsenic, Peter is sure she isn’t guilty, and he has thirty days to discover who is.

The real heroines of this story are the “superfluous” females, Miss Climpson and Miss Murchison. (In 1920’s England there were over a million women who would never marry because of the great numbers of men who were killed or maimed in World War One – they were thus “superfluous.”) Lord Peter, recognizing their intelligence and ingenuity, staffs a “typing bureau” with these women, and employs them to investigate matters where their talents are most useful. In Strong Poison, Miss Murchison finds employment as a typist for a suspicious lawyer (who is Boyes’s cousin) and Miss Climpson befriends the nurse of a wealthy, aged actress (who is Boyes’s great-aunt). Between them, they uncover the facts that point to the murderer. Then it is Lord Peter’s job to figure out how the murder was carried out.

Some of the scenes in this book are pure comedy: when the Bible-quoting Bill Rumm teaches Miss Murchison to how to pick locks, when Miss Climpson finds the great-aunt’s will by means of a seance, and when Peter’s family gathers at the ancestral home for Christmas dinner, Sayers is at her wittiest. The scenes among London’s bohemian set, which Sayers knew well, are wonderful social satire.

With ingenious plotting, clever dialogue, social commentary, and a little romance, Strong Poison is one of the tastiest of the Golden Age mysteries.