I’ve never read any of the Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels, or any of his collaborations with Harriet Vane, but now I want to go back and read about their first encounter. It sounds pretty scandalous: dead lovers and possible death sentences and all that. This story had lower stakes, but was still pretty good.
Harriet, an author of detective stories and amateur crime-solver, is summoned to her alma mater Oxford to help them deal with an irritation. Someone has been sending various members of the college crude and/or threatening letters, and the Dean is worried that things could escalate into full-on violence and therefore scandal. They want Harriet to find the culprit so they don’t have to call in official police. She sets about doing that, and eventually calls in Wimsey as backup when people start getting attacked.
I’m sure I missed some of the intricacies of the plot, since a lot of characterization has to do with Oxford things that went over my head. There were terms and titles I didn’t know, and sometimes I got confused because Harriet would occasionally refer to people as “Miss Whoever” and occasionally by their titles (“the Bursar”), so at first I thought there were twice as many suspects. The language is lovely, though – I especially liked their philosophical debates about being a scholar vs. being a wife/mother. Apparently there was no such concept was “work/life balance” back in 1935.
It was a good read that took a while to get into, but once I did, I knew I’d have to go back and find the first book. I don’t feel like I missed much jumping into the middle, but now I want the backstory. Some favorite lines:
“I suppose,” thought Harriet, “she had one of those small, summery brains, that flower early and run to seed.”
“All the children seem to be coming out quite intelligent, thank goodness. It would have been such a bore to be the mother of morons, and it’s an absolute toss-up, isn’t it? If only one could invent them, like characters in books.”
“Harriet, who had been congratulating herself upon the way in which she was keeping her temper, was seized with irritation.”
