This note contains spoilers for the series.

Dorothy Sayers, of course, is the author of the Lord Peter Wimsey books. I love these; I read them as historical novels as much as as mysteries (mid-1930s England). Did I mention I'm an anglophile? (I come by it honestly, my father was born there.)

Sayers had a rather short but quite spectactular career in mystery fiction. Unfortunately for me, she got drawn down a religious rat-hole and essentially stopped writing. Her last book on Lord Peter was published in 1939, but she lived until 1957. She was actually working contemporaneously with several authors I think of as much more current (see chart).

Her plots and characters developed a lot through her career. Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon bring Lord Peter's courtship of Harriet Vane to a successful conclusion, and are brilliant works about everything from feminism to mature romance (setting aside Peter's having decided on Harriet with completely inadequate information; he sticks to it and seems to have been right).

Gaudy Night

The Nine Tailors : Changes Rung on an Old Theme in Two Short Touches and Two Full Peals

Busman's Honeymoon : A Love Story With Detective Interruptions

Murder Must Advertise

Lord Peter goes undercover in an advertising agency to solve a murder. The author worked in an advertising agency at one time, and I wouldn't wonder if the details are right. There's a lovely discussion of the important distinctions between being made "of" something, "from" it, and "with" it. This is also the book where Lord Peter does his very surreal harlequin character in the evenings.

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