Skip to main content

Top mysteries challenge review: Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers

This is the first volume in the four book story arc within the Lord Peter Wimsey series that describes his developing relationship with Harriet Vane, from first meeting to honeymoon. Two of the books are on the top mysteries list, but I will be reading them in order of publication to get the story as it should be read.

Year of publication: 1930
Series and no.: Lord Peter Wimsey, no. 6
Genre: Mystery
Type of mystery: Murder
Type of investigator: Semi-pro
Setting & time: (mostly) London, England, 1930

Story:
Mystery author Harriet Vane stands accused of murder, but Lord Peter, who has fallen in love with her at first sight, does not believe she is guilty. When a hung jury results in a mistrial (meaning the case will have to be tried again), he sees a chance to investigate the case more thoroughly, and does so, revealing a fiendishly clever and well-planned murder plot.

Review:

SPOILERS

One of the drawbacks of doing research before you read a book is that it can take away some of the thrill of reading it. In this case I started reading with the knowledge that Harriet Vane was innocent, which is pretty obvious as she ends up marrying Wimsey in a later book. But it couldn’t be helped – these books are just too well known for the fact to slip by any mystery fan who doesn’t wear blinkers. I can only imagine what it must have been like to read the book when it was first published, because back then no-one but the author would have known for certain that she was innocent. But enough about that, on to the review.

This whodunit has the narrowest list of suspects I have come across in a mystery, so narrow that the whodunit element can’t be sustained all the way through and around the halfway mark it turns into a whydunit, and then into a howdunit. The mystery is very cleverly done, and this is a beautifully done puzzle plot. Lord Peter is slightly less foppishly annoying in this book than in some of the previous ones, which is good, and there is a wonderfully comic interlude with his employee and sometime spy, the resourceful Miss Climpson, pretending to be a medium in order to acquire some important papers. The writing, as usual, is very readable, and fortunately less peppered with French and Latin words and phrases than some of the previous books.


Rating: A complicated mystery that has a good reason for being reckoned a classic of the genre. 4 stars.

Books left in challenge: 96.

Place on the list(s): 67/36

Awards and nominations: None I know of.
Labels:

Comments

Dorte H said…
I like this book a lot, and considering when it was written, I think her plots were excellent.
August 02, 2009 1:55 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went...
Post a Comment
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...
Post a Comment
Read more