Mon 16 Mar 2026
Archived Mystery Review: DOROTHY L. SAYERS – Strong Poison.
Posted by Steve under Uncategorized[5] Comments
DOROTHY L. SAYERS – Strong Poison. Lord Peter Wimsey #5. Gollancz, UK, hardcover, 1930. Reprinted many times, including Perennial, paperback, 1987 (the edition read).
In which Lord Peter Wimsey meets mystery writer Harriet Vane, under the most unusual circumstances for the beginning of a romance, for she is on trial, for murder, for killing her former lover, whom she lived with for nearly a year, without benefit of clergy.
It’s a great start for a mystery story, and if it disappoints slightly in its outcome, it may be only natural. The puzzle, not as devious as it could be, eventually centers not on the actual murderer, but rather on how he managed to introduce arsenic into the victim’s system.
— Reprinted from Mystery.File.5, May 1988.
March 18th, 2026 at 2:55 pm
I absolutely adore the Wimsey novels, to which I was led by the outstanding adaptations starring Ian Carmichael, in my opinion a rare example of letter-perfect casting on par with Albert Finney’s Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express.
March 18th, 2026 at 3:20 pm
Besides one or two short stories that Wimsey was in, I think this was the only longer work I’ve read. I don’t know why I never followed up with the others. I seem to have liked this one well enough. It is a puzzle. (Nor have I ever watched the Carmichael series. Sometimes I think something is really wrong with me.)
March 21st, 2026 at 1:28 am
Peter is a bit harder to take still here, but it is the real first step to rounding out his character and showing some of the steel beneath the silly ass exterior.
I often wondered if there was some backlash at Sayers so obviously introducing a romance into the works at a time when it was rather frowned upon among sticklers of the Golden Age model.
March 22nd, 2026 at 9:19 am
How real or widespread was that attitude, I wonder? I have a feeling that practically all the founding members of the Detection Club (at least those that wrote novel-length mysteries) had broken Van Dine’s 3rd commandment at some point. A love interest for the Watson seems to have been a standard ingredient all along (going back to the actual Dr Watson, if not earlier).
While the relationship between Wimsey and Vane takes increasing focus in the later entries of the series, sometimes threatening to overshadow the mystery, in ‘Strong Poison’ I don’t think Sayers was doing anything that hadn’t already been done in well-regarded mysteries like ‘Trent’s Last Case.’
And of course, Sayers had also included a romance sub-plot in ‘Clouds of Witness’ (1926), where the police detective falls in love with Wimsey’s sister.
March 22nd, 2026 at 1:24 pm
And all beautifully relevant and well said. Thanks, Gunnar!