All of the
story choices were quite good and most were more suspenseful than I was expecting.
Because of my enormous love for all things related to John and Charles Wesley,
I got a huge kick out of the mention of their family ghost in Edmund Crispin’s
story.
In spite of
the title, I would not classify this as a cozy read. I can only remember one story
that was light-hearted. An example of the general tone of the stories can be
found in this paragraph from “Cambric Tea.” Bevis Holroyd went angrily upstairs;
he felt as if an invisible net was being dragged closely round him, something
which, from being a cobweb, would become a cable; this air of mystery, of horror
in the big house, this sly secretary, these watchful servants, the nervous
village doctor ready to credit anything, the lovely agitated woman and the
sinister sick man with his diabolic accusations, - a man Bevis had, from the
first moment, hated – all these people in these dark surroundings affected the
young man with a miasma of apprehension, gloom and dread.
This
collection is part of the British Library Crime Classics. Some writers from the
golden age of detective fiction have not held up well, but after this anthology
I’d be willing to trust any book put together by Martin Edwards.
If you are
looking for a cracking good mystery, you may be disappointed with all the
dialogue about marriage, but for me those conversations were what made the book
my favorite of all the Lord Peter novels. Sayers herself described it as “a
love story with detective interruptions.”
Sayer’s
novel are loaded with scrumptious literary references. Lord Peter and Inspector Kirk cheerfully exchange quotes from the Bible, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Browning, Keats, etc. I wish I could find an annotated version of this novel to
save me time from looking up translations of the Latin and French, but as it
was, I looked up about half the references and was richly rewarded in
discovering their meaning. Frankly, most of them were discreet reference to
sexuality that would have made me blush considerably in my younger years.
There is a
lot of (discreet) talk about previous liaisons, expectations for the wedding
night, etc., which I could appreciate after my three decades of marriage
because they showed Peter and Harriet wrestling with every aspect of their
marriage, not sugar-coating the past, but showing their growth in understanding
of what true love entails. I thoroughly enjoyed watching them come to grips
with the tough realities and indescribable joys of marital commitment.
In spite of
all the fancy quotes, Lord Peter finally concludes: And what do all the great
words come to in the end, but that? – I love you – I am at rest with you – I have
come home.
As if the
love story weren’t enough, the mystery is quite good. AND BUNTER GETS HIS DUE
as the devoted, unruffled servant - so much so that Harriet jokes that maybe
she should have married him instead of Lord Peter. I don’t know a thing about wine,
but the care with which Bunter handled the liquor in this book was
laugh-out-loud hilarious.
A
delightful read from start to finish. This is not a stand-alone novel. It is
necessary to read the previous novels to get the full impact of how Harriet and
Lord Peter are piecing their new lives together. Bravo to Dorothy Sayers for
showing the beauty and complexity of it.
He began a recent post with this verse from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat:
A book of VERSES underneath the bough,
A jug of wine, a loaf of
bread, and thou
Beside me singing in the
wilderness –
That wilderness were
paradise enow!
He then goes on to elaborate on the meaning of the word “verses” and how poetry and song have been an integral part of previous civilizations because they were the best way to hide the stories & poetry & truths in one’s heart. He regrets that our present generation “no longer has the VERSES in our soul.”
He adds, “People nowadays often scoff at this sort of thing,
calling it “rote memorization,” but that misses the heart of the matter
entirely. You can’t really “own” a song unless you hear it sung and
you can sing it yourself, and poetry is essentially song. When you
commit a poem to heart, when you get the VERSES within you, you must engage
your imagination; you see and hear things that make the VERSES fully present;
you exert your voice, and you hear your voice; your body moves, and the
movements have meaning; all kinds of memories, actions, emotions, thoughts, and
feelings come into play and involve themselves with the poem.” (from Oct 24,
2022)
I highly recommend this brief and delightful newsletter.
