The Late Scholar

The Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet, Book 4

De: Jill Paton Walsh

Narrado por: Matthew Brenher

Lord Peter Wimsey and his detective novelist wife Harriet Vane return in Jill Paton Walsh's brilliant new continuation of Dorothy L. Sayers's classic mysteries.

When a dispute among the fellows of St. Severin's College, Oxford University, reaches a stalemate, Lord Peter Wimsey discovers that as the Duke of Denver he is "the Visitor" - charged with the task of resolving the issue. It is time for Lord Peter and his detective novelist wife Harriet to revisit their beloved Oxford, where their long and literate courtship finally culminated in their engagement and marriage.

At first, the dispute seems a simple difference of opinion about a valuable manuscript that some of the fellows regard as nothing but an insurance liability, which should be sold to finance a speculative purchase of land. The voting is evenly balanced. The warden would normally cast the deciding vote, but he has disappeared. And when several of the fellows unexpectedly die as well, Lord Peter and Harriet set off on an investigation to uncover what is really going on at St. Severin's.

With this return to the Oxford of Gaudy Night, which many readers regard as their favorite of Sayers's original series, Jill Paton Walsh revives the wit and brilliant plotting of the golden age of detective fiction.

©2013 Jill Paton Walsh and the Trustees of Anthony Fleming, deceased. (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Another Good Lord Peter and Harriet story

I love reading about Peter and Harriet in the post-war world. Unfortunately the narration is sub-par, especially when it is a woman character.

For die-hard Wimsey fans

Any additional comments?

Jill Paton Walsh continues her brilliant evocation of Dorothy Sayer's detective series. However, this book is a paired continuation of Gaudy Night - in my opinion the most difficult and dense of the Sayer mysteries. Walsh has written a lovely book, and it is nowhere near as confusing as Gaudy Night. I am glad to have it in my library, but I enjoyed Walsh's previous novels more. I look forward to more books in Walsh's series.

Good plot but too many mispronunciations

The narrator has good voice tone and pacing, but ought to have made more of an effort to get words and names right!
Just a very quick online check today (2024) found pronunciations for Bredon, Balliol, and Keble.

Poor narration

What did you love best about The Late Scholar?

Patton catches some of the spirit of Sayers.

What did you like best about this story?

Again, Patton catches some of the spirit of Sayers.

What didn’t you like about Matthew Brenher’s performance?

Brenher has a really poor sense of rhythm and timing in reading a text. He often falls into a monotonic set of bursts of a half-dozen words at a time, regardless of what the text means. The story compensates for the poor narration, but only partially.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

An interesting imitation of Dorothy Sayers.

Pronunciation problems

The narrator mispronounced many of the names of places in Oxford as well as the names of some of the characters. It was rather distracting. His women’s voices are also a little artificially high pitched and all sound rather similar. However the story is engaging and he does do an excellent Lord Peter voice.