Next on my list is Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers. This was another super-cheap booksale impulse buy. I had seen reviews on LT of her works and decided it was worth trying one. This is a Lord Peter Wimsey murder mystery, somewhere in the middle of the series. I believe this is set in the late 1920s.

The book opens with Harriet Vane on trial for poisoning her ex-lover with arsenic, just before the jury is sequestered for a verdict, with the judge summing up the case. Harriet Vane is a moderately successful murder mystery author who recently researched arsenic poisoning for her latest novel. Lord Peter Wimsey apparently attended the trial and fell in love with the defendant and has decided to find the real murderer. He already has a reputation as a highly successful amateur sleuth with connections to Scotland Yard, not to mention great personal wealth and family connections as the brother of a duke.

The actual murderer was not difficult to figure out early on. The plot was not particularly complicated or subtle. This is very much a character-driven series. I must say that Peter's dialogue is quite odd, eccentric, idiosyncratic, full of literary allusions and period slang. It is worth reading the books, perhaps, just to hear him speak. Particularly amusing was his reference to Jeeves (as in P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster) when admonishing his valet, Bunker.

The other interesting item was the treatment of women. While Sayers's protagonist is male, many of the pivotal clues are discovered by his female allies/employees. In effect, he has created a detective agency employing strictly women (fondly called "The Cattery"), which allows him to inveigle someone into suspicious households and businesses in the guise of domestic servants, clerical employees, and so on to gather the important clues and evidence. This works because women are so often invisible, downtrodden, and otherwise suffer under the oppressive society that provides them so few opportunities to exist outside of marriage and well-to-do families. Many of the women employed by the agency would be destitute without this rare and discreet job opportunity. Hence they are certainly loyal to Lord Peter and very dedicated in their work. Regardless of its effectiveness as a plot device, it provides an interesting perspective on the society of the day. None of the characters is particularly deep, but they are individuals.

So I may try other books from the library, but I'm not interested enough to add this series to my own collections. I'll be giving this copy away. It was enjoyable enough, worth the read, but not a keeper for me. ( )

Our first introduction to Harriet Vane and one of the great romances of cozy detection. I know that many people now see Peter Wimsey as a foppish caricature but this is not my perception. Here he is the romantic hero of a quest for the fair lady with the looming deadline of Harriet's retrial setting a clear boundary to his investigation. In practice, the murderer can be deduced early in the novel, so it becomes a whydoit and a howdunnit until the end.

Written in the late 1920s about contemporary England, the book is filled with social commentary explored from various angles by using the viewpoints of several characters. Harriet's circumstances having been shaped significantly by the changing role of women. Modernism and spiritualism are mocked trenchantly in sharp aphorisms.

Most whodunnits do not bear rereading but Sayers' sharp with and incisive observation provide continuing rewards. ( )

A rousing Golden Age read. Our introduction to Dorothy L. Sayers and enjoyed by all of us in the discussion group ( )

Strong Poison is the first book in the Lord Peter mysteries that introduces the character of Harriet Vane, and it's a very well-executed mystery. Harriet Vane is a mystery novelist who is standing trial for the murder of her lover Philip Boyes, who died by arsenic poisoning. They were estranged at the time of the murder, and all the evidence points to Harriet as the murderer. But Lord Peter is in the courtroom, and he doesn't think she did it, though he hasn't a shred of proof. The jury is unable to reach a verdict, and the retrial is postponed for a month. Lord Peter immediately offers his services to Miss Vane's lawyers, and his undying personal devotion to Miss Vane herself. Surely a prison visiting room is a most unusual place to receive a proposal!

I thought Harriet's relationship with Boyes was fascinating. He had cajoled her to live with him, but he wouldn't marry her because he didn't believe in formal marriage (though she did). They lived together about a year and seemed fairly happy, but when Boyes actually did offer her marriage, Harriet broke off the relationship. It seems that he only asked her to live with him to see if her devotion was abject enough, if she would crush all her personal scruples to do his bidding. When she had, he decided she'd "earned" the reward of formal marriage (which he did believe in after all) — and the worm turned. It is about a year later, after an unhappy interview with Harriet, that Boyes dies of arsenic poisoning. And Harriet is writing a mystery about arsenic poisoning at the time, and knows all about it...

Harriet has a wonderful sense of humor and she comes across as a very realistic character, despite the fact that she doesn't get much screentime in this story (unavoidable, I suppose, as she is in prison the whole time). I made the mistake of reading Gaudy Night, the third novel featuring Harriet and Lord Peter, before this one so I was slightly spoilered for the final result of the trial, though I didn't know the details. I wish I had read this one first, because Sayers creates a fantastic character arc with Harriet and it starts here.

Lord Peter is quite fun as usual, though certain things that would at first seem endearing are actually done for very selfish reasons (see his painfully honest confession in Gaudy Night — wow). I haven't seen much of his mother in the books I've read so far, and she was wonderful for the quick peek we got. I also really liked how Peter asked Inspector Parker what his intentions were regarding Peter's sister. Good stuff!

I am rather proud of myself for figuring out the murderer long before the end, and even a plausible way the arsenic could have been consumed. In some ways I like my solution better than Sayers'! I don't think this puzzle was about figuring out whodunit so much as howdunit. All in all, this is an excellent mystery with first-class characterizations. Highly recommended. ( )

Wonderfully evocative and introducing Harriet Vane, the love of Lord Peter Wimsey's life. ( )