One of the greats of British crime fiction Dorothy L Sayers (13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) wrote numerous crime fiction novels including eleven featuring the character Lord Peter Wimsey. The character Harriet Vane, a Wimsey love interest, also appeared in four of them and shone a light on Sayers strong views on equality. 

Facts are like cows. If you look them in the face long enough, they generally run away.

Her work also touches on other issues of the day including generational and class divides, the effects of war, Depression-era loansharking, financial scandals of the late 1920’s, fear of Fascism, the Chinese civil war and more. The themes provided background to ingenious mystery puzzles and full characters conveyed with humour, grace and flair.

Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.

Sayers worked in advertising for a period and was responsible for among other things the Guiness advertising campaign featuring zoo animals, some of which still make an appearance. She was also responsible for Colman’s Mustard 1920 guerrilla marketing campaign The Mustard Club.

Writing poetry and advertising copy didn’t earn enough, and the need to make a living is what motivated her to start writing crime fiction. The character Lord Peter Wimsey gave her an opportunity to spend money she didn’t have herself. She published Whose Body? at age 30 and never looked back, becoming a member and president of the Detection Club alongside writers such as Agatha Christie. Sayers strong principles of fair play were codified in the oaths required of prospective members of the Detection Club.

Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them, using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on, nor making use of, Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo-Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence or the Act of God?

Do you promise to observe a seemly moderation in the use of Gangs, Conspiracies, Death-Rays, Ghosts, Hypnotism, Trap-Doors, Chinamen, Super-Criminals and Lunatics; and utterly and forever forswear Mysterious Poisons unknown to Science?

Sayers crime novels were published between 1923 and 1937 along with dozens of short stories. During the same period she edited the three volumes of Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror (1928, 1931, 1934), its sequel Tale of Detection (1936), and reviewed more than 350 detective novels for the Sunday Times.

Some people’s blameless lives are to blame for a good deal.

In the late 1930s Sayers stopped writing crime fiction, although some unpublished works were released after her death. The cessation was partly due to the war and feeling there was enough death and violence in the world without putting it in books. In addition, now she had the financial resources to follow her passion for poetry and religion. She translated Danete’s Inferno, The Divine Comedy, Hell, Purgatory and was working on Paradise when she died in 1957. She also produced a raft of religious literature and radio plays.

Four of Sayers crime novels appeared in the UK Crime Writers Association 1990 list of the Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time and five in the Mystery Writers of America’s 1995 list of 100 novels.

How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.

Limited Bibliography

Crime-Mystery Books

Whose Body? (1923)

Clouds of Witness (1926)

Unnatural Death (1926)

The Unpleasantness of the Bellona Club (1928)

The Documents in the Case (1930)

Strong Poison (1930)

The Five Red Herrings (1931)

Have his Carcase (1932)

Murder must Advertise (1933)

The Nine Tailors (1934)

Gaudy Night (1935)

Busman’s Honeymoon (1937)

Short Story Collections

Lord Peter Views the Body (1928)

Hangman’s Holiday (1933)

In the Teeth of the Evidence (1939)

Lord Peter (1972)

Striding Folly (1972)

With the Members of the Detection Club

The Floating Admiral (1931)

Ask a Policeman (1933)

Double Death (1939)

The Scoop (1983)

No Flowers by Request (1984)

How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.