Showing results by author "Dorothy L Sayers" in All Categories

The Duke of Denver, accused of murder, stands trial for his life in the House of Lords. Naturally, his brother Lord Peter Wimsey is investigating the crime - this is a family affair. The murder took place at the duke's shooting lodge and Lord Peter's sister was engaged to marry the dead man. But why does the duke refuse to co-operate with the investigation? Can he really be guilty, or is he covering up for someone?

In A Presumption of Death, Jill Paton Walsh tells how World War II changed the lives of Peter, Harriet and their growing family. The story opens in 1940. Harriet Vane - now Lady Peter Wimsey - has taken her children to safety in the country. But the war has followed them: glamorous RAF pilots and even more glamorous land-girls scandalise the villagers; the blackout makes the nighttime lanes as sinister as the back alleys of London.

A prominent financier vanishes before bedtime, without his clothes. Hours later, a corpse is found in a bathtub wearing only pince-nez eyeglasses. When it’s determined that the body is not that of the financier, it’s up to amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey to uncover the naked truth. As the part-time sleuth investigates what these men - one dead, one missing, both starkers - have in common, the pieces of two puzzles converge, and the case becomes more dangerous by the clue.

After a corpse wearing pince-nez glasses is found in a bathtub, Lord Peter Wimsey undertakes the case and investigates the deed privately. But determining whether the corpse belongs to a well-known banker or a group of mischief-making medical students is just the beginning of this tangled mystery plot.

The first three mysteries for Dorothy L. Sayers' aristocratic sleuth: first, a body is discovered in a Battersea bathroom, wearing nothing but a pair of pince-nez, on the same night that financier Sir Reuben Levy disappears from his Park Lane home. Then, Wimsey returns to England when his brother, the Duke of Denver, is accused of murdering the fiance of their sister, Lady Mary, and a trial in the House of Lords looms; and finally, an overheard conversation in a restaurant begins an investigation of the strangely premature death of wealthy and terminally ill old lady Miss Agatha Dawson.

The Mind of the Maker will be relished by those already in love with Dorothy L. Sayers and those who have not yet met her. A mystery writer, a witty and perceptive theologian, culture critic, and playwright, Dorothy Sayers sheds new, unexpected light on a specific set of statements made in the Christian creeds. She examines anew such ideas as the image of God, the Trinity, free will, and evil, and in this text, a wholly revitalized understanding of them emerges.

That I, whose experience of teaching is extremely limited, should presume to discuss education is a matter, surely, that calls for no apology. It is a kind of behavior to which the present climate of opinion is wholly favorable. If we are to produce a society of educated people, fitted to preserve their intellectual freedom amid the complex pressures of our modern society, we must turn back the wheel of progress some 400 or 500 years, to the point at which education began to lose sight of its true object, toward the end of the Middle Ages.

Meet Lord Peter Wimsey, stylish, eccentric, seeming a fool, but in fact one of the great English detectives. The discovery of a body in a bathtub wearing only a pair of spectacles launches a motley set of sleuths and suspects toward a ghastly conclusion.

Three perplexing puzzles - and three inimitable Wimsey solutions - told with wit, humor, and suspense. Narrator Ian Carmichael, the quintessential Lord Peter, provides great entertainment with his talented performance of these three stories. In "Striding Folly", a frightening dream provides a haunting premonition. A house numbered 13 is in a street of even numbers, and a dead man was never alive in "The Haunted Policeman." And "Talboys" sees Lord Peter's own children accused of theft.

Amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey sets out to unravel a puzzling case involving the disappearance of a wealthy financier and the discovery of a corpse in a bathtub. He does succeed in solving things to everyone's ultimate satisfaction, but only after a series of bloodcurdling and hair-raising episodes that will hold the listener spellbound with anticipation.

This anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together 13 tales from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including a newly discovered Gervase Fen novella by Edmund Crispin that has never previously been published. With the Golden Age of detective fiction shining ever more brightly thanks to the recent reappearance of many forgotten crime novels, Bodies from the Library offers a rare opportunity to read lost stories from the first half of the twentieth century by some of the genre’s most accomplished writers.

'No sign of foul play,' says Dr Carr after the post-mortem on Agatha Dawson. The case is closed. But Lord Peter Wimsey is not satisfied... With no clues to work on, he begins his own investigation. No clues, that is, until the sudden, senseless murder of Agatha's maid. What is going on in the mysterious Mrs Forrest's Mayfair flat? And can Wimsey catch a desperate murderer before he himself becomes one of the victims?

The elegant, intelligent amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey is one of detective literature's most popular creations. Ian Carmichael is the personification of Dorothy L. Sayers' charming investigator in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation. The dignified calm of the Bellona Club is shattered when Lord Wimsey finds General Fentiman dead in his favourite chair. A straighforward death by natural causes? Perhaps... but why can no one remember seeing the general the day he died?

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. In his eighth appearance (and the second book featuring Harriet Vane), he solves a murder on a deserted English beach. With an introduction by Elizabeth George. A young woman falls asleep on a deserted beach and wakes to discover the body of a man whose throat has been slashed from ear to ear...

Dorothy L. Sayers was best known for her mystery novels featuring aristocratic amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. But she was also a poet, playwright and committed Christian, and in The Man Born to Be King, she combined art and evangelism to powerful effect, making the story of Christ accessible, relevant and every bit as thrilling as her detective fiction.

When copywriter Victor Dean falls to his death on the stairs of Pym's Advertising Agency, everyone assumes it was an unfortunate accident. His replacement doesn't think so and begins asking a lot of questions. The new man is something of a mystery to his colleagues, and he certainly dresses well considering his meagre writer's salary.

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.

Inspector Rudge does not encounter many cases of murder in the sleepy seaside town of Whynmouth. But when an old sailor lands a rowing boat containing a fresh corpse with a stab wound to the chest, the Inspector's investigation immediately comes up against several obstacles. The vicar, whose boat the body was found in, is clearly withholding information, and the victim's niece has disappeared. There is clearly more to this case than meets the eye - even the identity of the victim is called into doubt.

The chief character, Lord Peter Wimsey, goes to the Bellona Club to have a meal with an old friend of his, ninety-year old General Fentiman. In great surprise, he finds the aged man fully dressed by the fire in full rigor mortis. A question arises concerning the time of death and the situation develops into a serious murder investigation. Wimsey sometimes seemed to have a supercilious attitude as a monocled aristocrat and sometimes became a sort of professional detective. His family motto was, “As my whimsy takes me.”

The Duke of Denver, accused of murder, stands trial for his life in the House of Lords. Naturally, his brother Lord Peter Wimsey is investigating the crime - this is a family affair. The murder took place at the duke's shooting lodge and Lord Peter's sister was engaged to marry the dead man. But why does the duke refuse to co-operate with the investigation? Can he really be guilty, or is he covering up for someone?