Published by New English Library, originally 1930 this edition 1973
Book 5 in the series of Peter Wimsey
ISBN 450-01392-8
192 pages
Grade 5/5
I will certainly read more by this author
Genre: crime
Keywords: Peter Wimsey, Harriet Vane, arsenic, murder, free love vs marriage, crime novelist, Bunter the butler, Peter’s family, Charles Parker, a will an inheritance.
This book starts in the court room with the judge instructing the jury before isolating to decide if Harriet Vane, author of crime novels, is guilt and should be hanged. Peter Wimsey has been away but has come to see the trial Charles Parker, his police friend, has detected.
Peter falls (hopelessly) in love with Harriet on sight, he thought it could be an interesting life together, he doing detecting and she writing about it. Peter is convinced she did not kill her ex-lover, Phil, who had persuaded her to live with him without being married. After about a year of living together Phil propose that they get married. Harriet gets angry, he has deceived her as his conviction of not getting married and persuaded her to take on his conviction of free live. So, Harriet left him because ‘he had made a fool of her’. Phil does not understand and tries to persuade her to get together again. After yet another meeting between the two, Phil falls ill and dies. It turns out he was killed by arsenic, which Harriet had researched for a up-coming novel.
Against every prediction the jury cannot agree on Harriet being guilty or not; Peter is convinced he can prove she did not do it.
He goes to the prison to talk to her and on the spot tells her he wants to marry her. She told him that so did 46 other men who already proposed to her.
SO, we follow him entering the artists’ life of London, there is a group for Phil believe him a genius; we follow him to the group for Harriet (the women) much more likeable to my taste.
Harriet feels like in a novel with the perfect plot she cannot find a way out of.
I think the plot is good. I do not really like the way that mystery and orgies are put into it; showing that at the time that was what certain women had to fall back upon, not being educated and getting a better way to handle life.
Peter is becoming more mature and certain in his detecting, but find that be in love cause him to doubt himself.
Quotes:
Page 38, Harriet: “by the way, you are bearing in mind, aren’t you, that I had a lover?”
Peter: Oh, yes. So have I, if it comes to that. In fact, several. It’s the sort of thing that might happen to anybody.”
Page 104: Peter: that passion for being useful, which attacks the best of us when we are getting past our prime.
Page 125: The inherited inhibitions of twenty civilized centuries tied one hand and foot in bonds of ridicule.
This series if of course written by a woman who could be considered a feminist, describing freedom for men, condemnation for the woman, doing the same things. The book is full of comments by old-fashioned men who want women to stay at home and be decorative. One thing that Phil resented was that Harriet earned four times more money than he did. His genius was not recognized by the public. About Harriet’s work Peter’s mother said that Harriet writes wonderful English and clever plots, she did not guess the criminal until page 200. I assume that Harriet is a literary version of the author. Anyway, I thing it is done nicely. This author should have a wider audience also in the 21st century.
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