Gaudy Night: A Lord Peter Wimsley Mystery (A Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery) [Paperback]

 

 

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well, I simply loved this book. But the ones out there who need corpses and action, turn back now. This is a character-piece. Also, if you haven't read "Strong Poison" and "Have His Carcase", I recommend you read them first. You don't need it to understand the story, but it is necessary to understand both Harriet and Peter Wimsey, and more importantly, their relationship. And if you don't like Harriet Vane, don't bother either. I, for one, liked Harriet a lot, and it was great to see her develop from love-interest in "Strong Poison" to an independant, strongly-built character in "Have his Carcase" and this book. The fascination of this novel is not driven by the crimes committed, but by the atmosphere of the place and Harriet's state of mind. Psychology, philosophy and an entire world-view are examined and presented. One really would like to be part of this community, as it is depicted. But what clinches it for me is again, the romance, if you can call it that. Harriet's relationship with Peter Wimsey at it's best and worst. The developement of Peter is also quite clear,he is given a depth he never had before So, conclusion: a great book, lots of atmosphere, lots of romance, lots of character. I hated it when this book ended...

Warning: This is not an Agatha Christie puzzle book!!!!! If this is what you want as a reader don't buy it. However if you are looking to find a great book with a brilliant plot then get this.
Not only is this a fantastic crime novel it is also one of the best philosophical novels Sayers wrote. If you have any interest in Wimsey, in womens position in society or in the movement of women into academia this book is definitly for you! The suspense is gripping, will Harriet's heart over rule her head? Can a women have both a career and a meaningful relationship based on honesty? For perhaps the first time this writer has shown that the solving of the crime is not the end of the story, there are always consequences. Without a doubt this is one of the best books Sayers ever wrote.

About her book "Gaudy Night," Dorothy L. Sayers had this to say:

"It would be idle to deny that the city and University of Oxford (in aeternum floreant) do actually exist...." But, "Shrewsbury College, with its dons, students and scouts, is entirely imaginary; nor are the distressing events described as taking place within its wall founded upon any events that have ever occurred anywhere. Detective-story writers are obliged by their disagreeable profession to invent startling and unpleasant incidents and people, and are (I presume) at liberty to imagine what might happen if such incidents and people were to intrude upon the life of an innocent and well-ordered community.... Certain apologies are, however, due from me: first to the University of Oxford, for having presented it ... with a college of 150 women students, in excess of the limit ordained by statute. Next, and with deep humility, to Balliol College--not only for having saddled it with so wayward an alumnus as Peter Wimsey, but also for my monstrous impertinence in having erected Shrewsbury College upon its spacious and sacred cricket-ground."

That passage will give you a feeling for Sayers' rather grand, even lofty (by detective story standards, anyway) prose style, as well as the tongue-in-cheek, in-your-eye amusement that lurks behind her formal persona.

When I first encountered Sayers and fell into a binge of reading her works, I was a teenager. With the breezy assurance of that age, I confidently ranked "Gaudy Night" as her feeblest work and "The Nine Tailors"--or maybe "Murder Must Advertise" as her best. If anyone at the time had asked me why I had done so, I would have pointed out that the mystery element was only a strand among many in "Gaudy Night," and far from the most important one. Moreover, I'd have said, it's a Lord Peter Wimsey novel and Wimsey doesn't even turn up until Chapter IV, after which he promptly disappears for a couple of hundred pages.

And yet, over the years when, for whatever reason, one of these books came to mind, I might think, "Murder Must Advertise," yes, very clever, Lord Peter writing ad copy and all that, or "The Nine Tailors," yes, very clever, those bells and all that. But for "Gaudy Night," my thoughts would more likely take this sort of turn: that Harriet Vane has some very odd ideas and notions. We certainly are beyond that sort of thing today--but I know some people who share most or all of those very some ideas and notions. They are walking anachronisms and yet, here they are, unquestionably my contemporaries. On some days, I even find myself agreeing with her and concluding that the lunatics have taken over our Twenty-first Century asylum.

Or consider Harriet Vane as a fictional character--amusing, humorless, witty, ponderous, brilliant, too often plodding Harriet. She is, of course, Dorothy L. Sayers (in every aspect that Sayers, herself, would regard as significant), pinned on the pages of the book like some strange sort of moth, a specimen preserved and displayed for the examination of the ages.

I recently encountered a 1944, wartime edition of "Gaudy Night" in a bookshop window. On its copyright page, it proudly bore the motto, "Books are weapons in the war of ideas." The book was published in an era of tight paper rationing and extreme austerity, but what a wonderfully sensuous volume it was with its thick, creamy paper, exquisite printing, wide margins and excellent commercial binding in dark blue book cloth. I snapped it up (how could I not?), and read it that evening. It was, I suppose, my fifth or sixth journey through the book.

I am no longer a teenager (alas), and I no longer consider "Gaudy Night" to be Sayers' feeblest work. It might very well be her best: better than "Murder Must Advertise," better than "The Nine Tailors" and certainly much better than the workmanlike (but no more) translation of Dante for which she abandoned her true literary vocation in her final years.

Some mystery fans downgrade "Gaudy Night" because it is a weak mystery novel. A couple of such fans are to be found right here among the Amazon reviewers of the book. They are quite right. It is a weak mystery novel. It is, in fact, just a novel, but a very good one.

The true peers of "Gaudy Night" are not such classic mysteries as Christie's "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" or Marsh's "A Man Lay Dying," but English academic novels, the likes of Amis' "Lucky Jim" or Snow's "The Masters." If the literary arena is widened to include plays, then "Gaudy Night" shares space with "The Browning Version" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

Here is Dorothy L. Sayers again, this time as Sayers the novelist:

"Harriet Vane sat at her writing-table and stared out into Mecklenburg Square.... A letter lay open on the blotting-pad before her, but its image had faded from her mind to make way for another picture. She saw a stone quadrangle, built by a modern architect in a style neither new or old, stretching out reconciling hands to past and present. Folded within its walls lay a trim grass plot, with flower-beds splashed at the angles, and surrounded by a stone plinth. Behind the level roofs of Cotswold slate rose the brick chimneys of an older and less formal pile of buildings--a quadrangle also of a kind, but still keeping a domestic remembrance of the original Victorian dwelling-houses that had sheltered the first shy students of Shrewsbury College....

"Memory peopled the quad with moving figures. Students sauntering in pairs. Students dashing to lectures, their gowns hitched hurriedly over light summer frocks, the wind jerking their flat caps into the absurd likeness of so many jesters' coxcombs. Bicycles stacked in the porters' lodge, their carriers piled with books and gowns twisted about their handle-bars. A grizzled woman don crossing the turf with vague eyes.... Tall spikes of delphiniums against the grey, quiveringly blue like flames. The college cat, preoccupied and remote, stalking with tail erect in the direction of the buttery."

Five stars (with flower-beds splashed at the angles, of course.)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Gaudy Night BBC Dramatisation
Delightful! Ian Carmichael, and all the cast, are wonderful. Not 100%totally true to the book, but only in the sense that some of the background details are missing. Read more

Published 10 months ago by Sumi22

4.0 out of 5 stars nicely unsettling
Heard this one on the radio in the car the other week so have at last managed to get my hands on the book proper. Read more

Published 19 months ago by Ellie Sarah

5.0 out of 5 stars Meet the nephew
Ian Carmichael is one of the first Lord Peter Wimsey's. There are a series of films with him as Wimsey such as "Five Red Herrings". Read more

Published 20 months ago by bernie

4.0 out of 5 stars A Dorothy L. Sayers delight.
I had to remember this was a BBC radio drama so some of the delights of Gaudy Night were missing including the insights of the tutors personalities and some of the love theme... Read more

Published 21 months ago by Rita Reed

5.0 out of 5 stars Crime has consequences
I first read `Gaudy Night' about 40 years ago and I have re-read it many times since. It's a book which can be read on many levels. Read more

Published on 26 Dec 2009 by Damaskcat

3.0 out of 5 stars Dated, but enjoyable
There are many difficulties for the modern reader in Sayers' detective novels because attitudes have changed so much since she wrote them. Read more

Published on 7 Dec 2009 by Graham R. Hill

1.0 out of 5 stars defective detection
When poison pen letters and rude messages start appearing at Harriet Vane's old Oxford College, the lady dons ask Harriet if she could help solve the mystery rather than involve... Read more

Published on 31 Aug 2009 by A. C. Dickens

5.0 out of 5 stars Gaudy Night: Mystery and suspense....to a degree.
This is a mystery novel in which no-one dies, or at least in which death remains firmly in the background - in the end much more rewarding, as the focus moves to the characters,... Read more

Published on 19 Feb 2008 by C. JONES

5.0 out of 5 stars As much a fascinating character study as it is a twisting mystery
Set five years after the events of Strong Poison, the fascinating thing about this book is that whilst there is a strong mystery element to it, it's essentially a character study... Read more

Published on 20 Jun 2007 by quippe

4.0 out of 5 stars CD - Good BBC production - Harriet Vane is the Star
CD - Good BBC production - Harriet Vane is the star in this in a womens college at Oxford, so it seems to be more a womens story but I enjoyed it all the same. Read more

Published on 10 Mar 2007 by Mr. DAVID Geer

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