Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery) [Mass Market Paperback]

Gaudy is probably my favorite of all Sayers' novels. The whole story is very gripping, but the deep moral, romantic, and psychological undercurrents make for a wonderfully literate mystery novel - something which one doesn't come across too often. Sayers' fits right in with all the best British crime novelists: Doyle, Chesterton, Christie, and James.

Dorothy Sayers has frequently used autobiographical experiences as a starting point for her writing - as an example, "Murder Must Advertise" was set in an advertising agency and based on Sayers' own experiences in the field. Here again, Sayers goes back to her past days as an Oxford student at Somerville College and this makes "Gaudy Night" a unique entry in the Lord Peter Wimsey series. Harriet Vane, an Oxford alum, attends the Gaudy, which is a reunion of past students and is asked by her old professors to turn her talents as a detective writer to practical use. Someone is terrorizing the faculty and students of the college by sending vicious anonymous letters. The college is terrified of this leaking out to the press and giving education for women a bad name, therefore discretion is vital. Rather relectantly, Harriet accepts and comes down to Oxford to stay for a term. She discovers that the perpetrator is not now satisfied by just sending letters and is moving on to more serious offences like trying to burn the books in the college library, destroy the works of the faculty and eventually attacking certain faculty members. Harriet struggles with the realization that the perpetrator may be a professor as well as with the realization of her growing feelings for Lord Peter Wimsey. The actual unraveling of the mystery is fascinating by itself, but I was particularly intriuged by Sayers taking the opportunity to discuss issues such as society's view towards University education for women, and the need to maintain one's own identity, even in a serious relationship. "Gaudy Night" is therefore a truly feminist work and Harriet's internal struggle between her love for Wimsey and her desire to maintain her independence is something all women can identify with, even today. Although she is hard to like at times, being prickly and sensitive to a fault, we can all sympathize with her predicament. In a nutshell - absolutely fabulous and required reading for all Sayers fans!

Whereas we Americans were sopping up noir novels and films of Chandler and Cain, the English were serving up their version of the mystery with the elegant writer Doroty L. Sayers. In this novel she puts her detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, into the story, as usual, but gives his girlfriend, Harriet Vane, center stage. Harriet returns to her college reunion and while having a great time with her old chums suddenly starts receiving poisen pen letters. Like her American counterparts though, Sayers is interested in the characters and what they are able to observe of the best and worst in people. However, they don't do it with the hard edged noir American style. The English style is quiet, elegant, country houses and colleges, lords, gentlemen and their ladies and then, intruding into this perfect world, The Crime and what the crime does to the people around it. Sayers remains my favorite of the British writers who either started this tradition or carry it on today.