...by Dorothy L Sayers
The Peter Wimsey novels seem to get bigger as you go along, which is worth noting given that Wimsey doesn't really show up til more than halfway through this one. To a great extent this is a novel about Harriet Vane, the woman he saved from the gallows five years before and who has steadfastly resisted his marriage proposals ever since. But if there is a love song in this book, then it seems to me it is to Oxford, the spires, the spring, the joy of scholarship - all things which it seems Sayers loved and maybe missed? And Harriet certainly does. Against this backdrop - or woven through it - a case arises which requires her investigation sans Wimsey, but the elements of which allow us to get to know Harrier properly whilst she works through the shadows of her past, and even what on earth has been going on in her mind these last five years since encountering Wimsey.
Very different from the other novels - but one which, if ever I have the fortune to have a holiday in Oxford again, I would re read there as a fitting soundtrack.
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