Product Description

Can Lord Peter Wimsey prove that Harriet Vane is not guilty of murder - or find the real poisoner in time to save her from the gallows?

Impossible, it seems. The Crown’s case is watertight. The police are adamant that the right person is on trial. The judge’s summing-up is also clear. Harriet Vane is guilty of the killing her lover. And Harriet Vane shall hang.

But the jury disagrees.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42882 in Books
• Published on: 1968-10-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
‘She brought to the detective novel originality, intelligence, energy and wit.’ - P. D. James

‘I admire her novels . . . she has great fertility of invention, ingenuity and a wonderful eye for detail.’ - Ruth Rendell

‘She combined literary prose with powerful suspense, and it takes a rare talent to achieve that. A truly great storyteller.’ Minette Walters

About the Author
Dorothy L Sayers was born in Oxford in 1893, and was both a classical scholar and a graduate in modern languages. As well as her popular Lord Peter Wimsey series, she wrote several religious plays, but considered her translations of Dante's Divina Commedia to be her best work. She died in 1957.

Customer Reviews

Murder most literary
"Strong Poison" is a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, the first of four that feature his relationship with Harriet Vane, so if you are new to Sayers, this is a good one with which to start. Sayers was one of the authors of mystery's "Golden Age", following the pioneers - Poe, Wilkie Collins and Conan Doyle - and preceding the hardboiled school of Hammett and Chandler. She was thus a contemporary of Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen.

Her style is perhaps the most literary and polished of any mystery writer. (For further evidence of her skills, read her superb translation of "The Song of Roland"). She handles dialogue and human interaction extremely well and convincingly portrays a wide range of character types. Also notable is the occasional flash of ironic, rather dark, humour. I have to say however, that her penchant for bizarre names can be rather off-putting. We meet two jounalists called Salcombe Hardy and Waffles Newton, a lawyer called Sir Impey Biggs and an actress called - would you believe? - Cremorna Garden.

The plot is not as strong as the poison; it is too linear, with no twists and turns, although the central idea is quite good. It is more interesting as a literary portrait of 1930 English society than as a crime puzzle. But a good read, nonetheless.

Hugely enjoyable
Given Harriet Vane's importance in the later Wimsey books, I was surprised to see her have such a small role in Strong Poison, although this is actually perfectly natural given that she's stuck in prison. She appears in only a couple of chapters and yet Sayers is skilful both at drawing her as a strong character in her own right - unconventional, witty, intelligent, very matter-of-fact and with her own moral code - and also at showing exactly why it is that Wimsey has fallen in love with her at first sight.

Wimsey himself was a revelation. I hadn't appreciated how much of a sense of humour he had and in fact, he spends a lot of time mocking himself, what he looks like and his own character - famously describing himself as having a "funny face". He's obviously intelligent, urbane, rich, powerful and famous and yet at no point does he ever come across as unlikeable or arrogant. There's also something quite romantic about the way in which he's convinced that he will eventually marry Vane, even though she has already rejected his proposal and he has rejected her counterproposal of just living in sin. The book ends with the two going their separate ways, but you just know that they'll end up together one day.

A second revelation was how small a part Wimsey actually plays in the actual detecting. There's no doubt that he's the intuition directing the operation, but when it comes to actually ferreting out information, Sayers uses characters such as his loyal batman Bunter, Miss Climpson (who runs the Cattery) and Miss Murchison (a member of the Cattery sent under cover). I found this fascinating - not least because modern crime novelists will often restrict their POVs to one or two (those usually being the main characters). I found that this approach really opened up the novel and kept it entertaining and I also enjoyed the fact that Sayers uses the jduge's summing up at the start of the book to convey the salient backstory and then an epistlery style to flesh out more background details as the book goes along.

The story itself is fascinating - firstly because of the way Sayers keeps the tension going between 3 possibilities - (a) Vane killed her lover; (b) her lover committed suicide because of her rejection of him, and (c) someone else killed him. Obviously, it couldn't have been Vane, and Sayers has a lot of fun keeping you on the path of (b), only gradually dripping in the information that leads you to suspect it could have been (c). It's an approach that's skilfully handled and keeps you guessing because once she's shown you who must have done it, she adds another element of suspense as you try to work out how it was done (and I'm not going to spoil that for you because it's the best part).

Much of the slang and dialogue in the book will seem very dated to modern readers, but I think that it adds to the charm and authenticity of the story.

First in the Harriet Vane series
Personally I have always been an Agatha the Christie fan. My first encounter with Dorothy L. Sayers was the Mobile Mystery Theater series showing on PBS.

Naturally the TV media cannot fill in all the details that you would pick up from reading the book. So I read the book. This added more depth to the story, but now I appreciate Dorothy L. Sayers more than Agatha Christie. But Dorothy not only fleshes her characters out better but her side trips into philosophy and psychology make the story that much more interesting. And just when you say what is the relevance to this conversation it is wrapped up in the final solution.

We are in luck as they still make the unabridged tape of "Strong Poison" The reader Is Ian Carmichael the first TV Lord Peter Wimsey. It makes a good compliment to the book.

This is the first of a fourth book series. The story is complete and can be used as a stand-alone story.

The notorious Harriet Vane is on trial for poisoning her previous live in lover. Naturally Lord Peter Wimsey falling in love with her, is determined that she is innocent and will prove this. To save her repartition he must fined the real culprit (if there is one), because if Harriet gets off on a technicality, she will always be under suspicion.