Lord Peter Wimsey

About Dorothy L. Sayers' detective mysteries featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. They are among my favorite mysteries:

The youngest brother of the Duke of Denver, Lord Peter is an Amateur Sleuth with a keen observational faculty, an intense sense of justice and deeply ingrained trauma from his service in the trenches, all of which he hides behind a diffident and flippant personality. As he has no need for a job, he spends his time collecting rare books and acting as a police consultant in murder and grand larceny cases, frequently alongside Inspector Charles Parker of Scotland Yard and Mervyn Bunter, his loyal valet and old war comrade. Other recurring characters include Harriet Vane, Peter's love interest and a rare example of an Author Avatar done exceptionally well; Miss Climpson, an elderly spinster whom Peter sometimes sends on fact-finding missions; The Honourable Freddy Arbuthnot, financial genius; Peter's mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver; and Peter's sister, Lady Mary, who rebels against her aristocratic family by involving herself in socialist politics.

The Wimsey stories take place between 1922 and 1936, and (a bit unusually for a mystery series) the characters age in real time: Lord Peter is thirty-two in Whose Body? and forty-six in Busman's Honeymoon. ....

In order of publication, the novels are:

• Whose Body? (1923)
• Clouds of Witness (1926)
• Unnatural Death (1927)
• The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928)
• Strong Poison (1931)
• The Five Red Herrings (1931)
• Have His Carcase (1932)
• Murder Must Advertise (1933)
• The Nine Tailors (1934)
• Gaudy Night (1935)
• Busman's Honeymoon (1937)

Literature / Lord Peter Wimsey