This is my least favorite of the Peter Wimsey mysteries, and whenever I reread it I'm pleasantly surprised by how much better it is than I remember it being.

What always throws me off is random, clumsy scenes and transitions - the scene, for example, where Bunter discovers the housekeeper dusting the wine bottles. It reads clumsily on the page, and seems to play Bunter for laughs in a way that undermines what we know of his character. There are scenes like this all over the book, and from the first time I read it, they have always jumped out at me, and pulled me out of my enjoyment of the rest of it.

Years later, I discovered why. Sayers didn't write this book. A friend of hers wrote a stage play using the characters, and when publishers and public were badgering her for more Peter Wimsey, she grabbed the play and adapted it. This revelation clarified everything. I can see an audience roaring with laughter at Bunter's sudden discomfiture, and so many of the scenes I deplore are now revealed as stage directions converted to text.

Having said all that, there is a lot to like about this book. Peter and Harriet are wonderful characters, and watching them settle in to life together is a joy. The whole game of quotations they constantly play is well worth whatever anyone might pay for a copy. There are other memorable characters, and Sayers did a good job with dialogue and setting.

This gets four stars, which is low only in that everything else in this series gets five. ( )

Busman's Honeymoon has a telling subtitle: "A Love Story with Detective Interruptions." This is an excellent description of where Sayers takes her characters, and fans of Lord Peter and Harriet Vane won't be disappointed in either aspect of the story.

It starts off with letters from the Duchess, Lord Peter's mother, in which she describes her impressions of Harriet and what she knows of their wedding and honeymoon plans. It's interesting to get a take on Harriet and Peter from this very interesting third party. The Duchess is an absolutely wonderful character. She is very random, but somehow never misses her target. Her descriptions of people and places are quite funny, and I wish we got to see more of her!

Harriet and Peter dodge his sister-in-law's designs for a huge society wedding, and skip off secretly to a little cottage in the countryside. There is some mix-up with the keys; the previous owner had not informed anyone else that the house was sold. The house needs a lot of work and poor Bunter is nearly beside himself trying to make things comfortable. It's certainly a most unusual wedding night.

And then they discover the previous owner, lying in the cellar with his head bashed in. By the looks of things, he'd been there a week, and all the clues had been ruined by Bunter's attempts to make the place presentable. There are a variety of characters who could have done it, but the main question is how. How could someone get into a locked house, cosh old Noakes on the back of the head, and escape without leaving a trace?

The characters are great, as usual. Aggie Twitterton, Noakes; niece, has such a fitting name. Mrs. Ruddle has a great name too — so Dickensian. I imagine her waddling, for some reason. In just a few deft words, Sayers gives a great portrait of Frank Crutchley, the gardener. And Mr. Puffett, the chimney sweep, is hilarious.

But of course the people we're really interested in are Harriet and Peter — and Bunter, to a certain extent. It's fascinating to watch Harriet and Peter get used to being married. And Bunter... he's the ultimate valet. I really loved learning how he came to be in Lord Peter's service.

I was a little surprised at some the content. Sayers makes a point of not going into what she laughingly calls "the secrets of the bedchamber" or some such thing, but there is certainly desire there, and the fulfilment thereof. It's nothing shocking by today's standards, but I wouldn't recommend this to younger readers.

This is the only Sayers mystery so far that has had me laughing as hard as I would with a Wodehouse book. The scene with the chimney sweep, and Lord Peter's hilariously adapted literary quotes, had me laughing so hard. His line, "I am coming, my love, my sweep!" killed me. I had to set the book aside just to laugh. And then, just when I was getting hold of myself once more, I'd pick it back up and reread that line, and explode into new fits of giggles. And I love when Lord Peter tells Harriet that they must be married, because domestic disasters of that sort only happen to married people. So true! I don't know what muse possessed Sayers when she was writing that scene, but I'm inclined to think it was Wodehouse's, maybe on holiday.

In the introduction Sayers writes that usually in detective stories, the love interest interrupts what we really care about: the mystery. But to the characters in the story, she reasons, wouldn't it be the other way around? In this story I found myself far more interested in the characters' relationships than in the mystery (which isn't shabby in the least). Sayers again takes the reader on an absorbing relational arc, covers it with brilliant humor, and leaves you standing on something firm and real underneath.

I really enjoyed this story, though Gaudy Night is still my favorite of the Lord Peter/Harriet mysteries. This is highly recommended. ( )

A wonderful mystery featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and his new wife, Harriet (Vane). Wonderfully written. ( )

This is a locked-door mystery as well as a murder in which the act leading to death happens way before the death itself (as is the case in many of Dorothy Sayers books), which sort of makes the locked door less of an obstacle. I did not guess whodunit, but I'm not sure I really cared. As she touched on in her note before the story, the "love-interest" and the "detective-interest" do not always mesh well. Lots of literary references, many of them obscure and not necessarily more clever than P.G. Wodehouse's. And then there are the letters from Lord Peter's uncle written in French with no clue in English as to what profound statements about life and love they contain. Still, I wanted to read it to the end; it's only after the book is over that it feels lacking. ( )

Lord Peter Wimsey and his bride, Harriet Vane, are caught up in a murder case while honeymooning in a newly acquired home in a small English village. We know, of course, that Lord Peter and his wife who shares his sleuthing talents, will solve the case. What we are allowed to witness in this book, however, is the personal cost to Lord Peter as he sends a man to his death. As an officer in WWI, Lord Peter was called upon to order many of his men into battles from which they did not return. Having a sensitive nature, he did not easily recover from this knowledge and suffers from nightmares and renewed psychological distress whenever confronted with being the agent to send a man once more to death no matter what crime has been committed. We also witness the healing qualities of a loving marriage as Harriet struggles to comfort and help him through this traumatic experience. A very literate book displaying the considerable intellectual breadth and depth of the mind of Dorothy Sayers. ( )