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3.78 AVERAGE
3.78 AVERAGE
I love the books on Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane written originally by Dorothy L Sayers and now continued by Jill Paton Walsh. Walsh really does justice to the couple and I really would like to see more on the Wimsey/Vane family.
The second World War is current in this novel and Peter with Bunter are overseas somewhere, while Harriet and the children are in the country home they own and Harriet finds herself with a mystery to solve.
This is an excellent read for those who like those classic mystery reads like Christie, Francis Durbridge's 'Paul/Steve Temple', Georgette Heyer mysteries, Marjorie Allingham ... just to name a few. If you haven't read these authors I recommend them, Heyer's mysteries are great, the Paul & Steve Temple mysteries are excellent and fun so give them all a try.
The second World War is current in this novel and Peter with Bunter are overseas somewhere, while Harriet and the children are in the country home they own and Harriet finds herself with a mystery to solve.
This is an excellent read for those who like those classic mystery reads like Christie, Francis Durbridge's 'Paul/Steve Temple', Georgette Heyer mysteries, Marjorie Allingham ... just to name a few. If you haven't read these authors I recommend them, Heyer's mysteries are great, the Paul & Steve Temple mysteries are excellent and fun so give them all a try.
It's not excellent as a Peter and Harriet novel - a pale echo of Sayers - but holds up as a mystery and a novel if divorced from its predecessors.
I haven't read any Dorothy Sayers so don't know how it compares, but this was a fairly enjoyable look at life during WWI.
Truthfully, it doesn't deserve four stars, but I have a passion for Harriet Vane and it would feel like being unfaithful to a friend to rate it lower. Ha ha. Second book I read on my Kindle Fire. On holiday. It's perfect that kind of thing. Unlike in real Dorothy L. Sayerses, I figured out the mystery pretty quickly. Well, most of it.
Still enjoying the continuation of Harriet and Peter's story, although this one was a little too easy to figure out. I would much rather be in the dark until the very end. It's no fun to solve the puzzles while Peter and Harriet are still fumbling around.
Ruth Rendell wondered, "Will Paton Walsh do it again?" My answer? Unfortunately, yes. Paton Walsh does not have the classic background of a Sayers. One of the delights of reading Sayers' work is all the quotations she would sprinkle through the pages. Not just to say, "look what I know" but as a natural part of the characters of Peter and Harriet. Paton Walsh may write very good mysteries of her own...but she really doesn't do Lord Peter well. I've read the Wimsey papers that this story is based on. As fragmentary as those are they are far superior to this novel--with all the flavor of Sayers' writing. This has none.
I've read these totally out of order, but I liked this more than I liked the two books that follow it in the series. This is more like a "proper" Peter and Harriet mystery, in the vein of Gaudy Night, where it's mostly Harriet on her own for a lot of the book. The war has started and Harriet and her children, along with the Parker children are at Tallboys, while Peter is away on a secret mission somewhere abroad. After a air raid practice drill, a landgirl is found dead in the street and Harriet is asked to help investigate. At first she finds it a good distraction from missing her husband, but she finds that she misses his assistance more and more as she tries to figure out why the woman was killed.
This has insights into life on the home front, and extracts from some of the letters that Sayers wrote as the Wimseys for London newspapers during the war - which perhaps explains why it feels a bit truer to the earlier novels than the later add-ons do. I liked the mystery enough, I liked the solution - although I had some bits of the mystery figured out much earlier than the characters did. Paton Walsh is definitely cannibalising some of the earlier Harriet and Peter exchanges for dialogue but it felt reasonably ok - and made them feel more like the characters that we know. A good enough read.
This has insights into life on the home front, and extracts from some of the letters that Sayers wrote as the Wimseys for London newspapers during the war - which perhaps explains why it feels a bit truer to the earlier novels than the later add-ons do. I liked the mystery enough, I liked the solution - although I had some bits of the mystery figured out much earlier than the characters did. Paton Walsh is definitely cannibalising some of the earlier Harriet and Peter exchanges for dialogue but it felt reasonably ok - and made them feel more like the characters that we know. A good enough read.
Its 1940 and Harriet has taken her children to Tallboys, the house where she and Lord Peter Wimsey spent their honeymoon. She is also looking after her nephews and niece while Mary stays in London. The indomitable Helen works for one of the officious government bodies and Peter is overseas working on sensitive international assignments.
As always, I love the historical detail, the rules and restrictions, the ways in which the villagers subvert the rules and the sheer joy of childhood secrets. I also love Harriet and Peter at Tallboys, in fact I must go back and re-read the short stories.
But it wouldn't be a Lord Peter Wimsey story without a mystery. In this case, one Saturday night after the village's dance featuring land girls working on the local farms and boys from the local RAF base, the village holds its air raid dry-run but when they emerge from the shelters they find a body lying in the street.
Secret cyphers, black-market goods, clandestine romances, and the ongoing love affair between Peter and Harriet - what more could I ask?
As always, I love the historical detail, the rules and restrictions, the ways in which the villagers subvert the rules and the sheer joy of childhood secrets. I also love Harriet and Peter at Tallboys, in fact I must go back and re-read the short stories.
But it wouldn't be a Lord Peter Wimsey story without a mystery. In this case, one Saturday night after the village's dance featuring land girls working on the local farms and boys from the local RAF base, the village holds its air raid dry-run but when they emerge from the shelters they find a body lying in the street.
Secret cyphers, black-market goods, clandestine romances, and the ongoing love affair between Peter and Harriet - what more could I ask?
New reader for this book -- took some getting used to, but enjoyed it once I did. Harriet on her own at Tallboys in WWII, holding down the fort and keeping the 5 kids of the next generation in the country with her (with nanny and cook and housemaid, of course). She remains a quietly enthralling character, and the story really powerfully relates the harrowing powerlessness of waiting that so many people have endured in times of war and crisis. Beautiful writing, feels true to the original series with perhaps a little more emotional depth.
In this second Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane book written by Jill Paton Walsh, WWII is beginning to make itself felt in Britain. Harriet Vane has taken her children as well as her sister-in-law Mary's children to the countryside, in parallel with thousands of evacuees. Her household is minus her husband and Bunter, off on a secret mission in wartorn Europe. The body of a girl turns up after a simulated air raid, and the harried police, who have been losing their numbers to the war effort and are constantly beset with suspicions of German spies, turn to Harriet the mystery novelist for help in solving it. I thought this was a really decent effort on Walsh's at emulating Sayers' voice, and it's really interesting to see what the Wimseys are getting up to during wartime.