Tag Archives: college setting

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers – 20 Books of Summer 2024

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Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers was first published in 1935 and it was a re-read for me, for at least the third time. The first time I read it was in the late 1970s. I think this one might be a love or hate book as I’ve realised over the years that some people hate it. I think they think that Sayer’s writing is pretentious because she did write quite a lot of quotes, bits of poems. I still love it and I’ve decided to re-read the other Lord Peter Wimsey books soon, in order this time. He probably annoys some readers, I just think he is funny and I’m pretty sure she modelled him and his ‘man’ Bunter on Wodehouse’s Wooster and Jeeves.

Anyway, the setting is mainly a women’s college in Oxford where Harriet Vane has gone to do some academic research. Shrewsbury is her old college so she knows some of the staff. Not all is well though, some of the staff and students have been receiving poison pen letters, and they think that as Harriet writes detective novels she might be able to get to the bottom of it all.

Things escalate though and even Harriet is targeted with letters, grafitti appears, there’s vandalism, destruction of academic work and all sorts of nastiness going on. Harriet decides that she needs help from Lord Peter, but he is out of the country and uncontactable.

Meanwhile she meets Peter’s nephew for the first time and he doesn’t realise that Harriet is completely in the dark about large parts of Peter’s life, he’s far from being the sybaritic poseur and posh twit that she thought him to be. When he’s out of the country he’s on important government business. Harriet begins to revise her feelings about Peter.

In a weird way this is my comfort read, – well – that and du Maurier’s Rebecca.

Do you have a comfort read that you turn to now and again? My mother-in-law’s was Gone with the Wind, but I am never going to go to that one.

 

The Wyndham Case by Jill Paton Walsh

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The Wyndham Case by Jill Paton Walsh was published in 1993. The only other books which I had read by this author were a Dorothy L. Sayers book which had been unfinished when Sayers died, which Walsh finished off, and a book in which she used the Sayers’ characters. This book is the first in a series featuring Imogen Quy – to rhyme with why.

The Wyndham Case has very much the same sort of feel, although updated. The setting is St Agatha’s College Cambridge, a place of petty rivalries between librarians and snobbery and bullying amongst the students.

Imogen Quy is the St Agatha’s College nurse and by the second page she was being sought out by the College Master – Sir William Buckmote, a tragedy has occurred. That was a big plus for me as I’m not keen on crime novels where the murder doesn’t occur until half-way through the book.

One of the students has been found dead in the Wyndham library, his head in a pool of blood. Is it murder or merely a tragic accident?

The deceased student happens to have been one of the few who come from a non fee-paying school, in fact he came from a grammar school and as such was suspect by the other students who looked down on him. Even worse as far as they were concerned – he actually wanted to learn things, whereas the wealthy students were more into partying.

Imogen Quy suspects foul play, but she’s the only one who does and there’s another murder before her fears are taken seriously.

This book was a sort of cross between a Dorothy L Sayers book and an Inspector Morse one, because of the supposedly superior college setting. I must admit it took me a wee while to get into it, despite the speedy murder. I found the dialogue to be awkward at the beginning but I ended up enjoying it and for me the twists and turns were unexpected. I will read more in the series at some point in the future.