The romantic conclusion of the series!: Lord Peter and Harriet Vane are married. In a series of letters we learn the details of the wedding and honeymoon. Due to the malicious meddling of Lord Peter's sister-in-law and the hounding of the press, the bride and groom decide at the last minute to be married in a small chapel in Oxford. Harriet has asked Lord Peter to buy her a beautiful and ancient farmhouse in the country where they decide to go for their honeymoon.

The adjustment to marring someone with money is a hurdle for Harriet. She buys him an expensive wedding gift that is just right, and with the last of her money she buys a gold designer wedding dress from Worth which suits her dark beauty perfectly. Lord Peter has made her independently wealthy but she has difficulty understanding the details. All that matters is that she has completely given her heart to Peter.

However, the honeymoon is not the quiet country idyll the Wimseys were longing for. The discovery of a body in the basement of their new home causes Lord Peter and Harriet to be swept up in a murder investigation and the press are once again at their door. While distracting, the investigation does not keep them from sharing many deep passionate moments. It does, however, cause them to confront difficulties in their personalities and temperaments.

Sayers writes with her usual wonderful characterizations and evocative style. The reader is transported to 1930's England, a simpler more elegant time. The intricacies of a grisly murder investigation throw into relief the charm of the simple life. Yet somehow this story has a more somber tone than the other Lord Peter mysteries, perhaps because it is the last book of the series. At any rate, once again Sayers delivers prime entertainment and an enchanting detective mystery, only this time Lord Peter is finally in a settled relationship with his beloved.

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. ( )