12 Reasons the Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries Should be on Your 2017 Reading List

Cover to The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, by Dorothy L. Sayers. Image via Open Road Media, digital publisher of this edition.

Looking for a fresh series or a set of re-reads to help anchor a 2017 reading list? Look no further than Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries.

With the new year still pretty new, it’s time to start thinking about what kinds of books you’d like to read in 2017. Sure, there are plenty of titles coming out this year in genres like science fiction and fantasy, but there are also hundreds, if not thousands, of classic novels just waiting for you to discover them.

To keep it in what we might call the genre section of fiction, we’re about to give you an introduction to Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy L. Sayers’ creation who first debuted in 1923 with the novel Whose Body?. As his title suggests, he’s a nobleman, but he’s got his hobbies to fill his days. One of those hobbies just so happens to be crime. He consults with the police and works with people like his manservant Bunter in order to crack complex, compelling, and confusing cases.

However, we’ve come to the conclusion that Wimsey doesn’t necessarily get as much love as his literary contemporaries in the world of detection fiction. With this brief list, we aim to make an argument that he deserves at least a chance from you as you start to contemplate your reading challenges and list for the new year.

To borrow from another literary detective and ultimately from Shakespeare, the game’s afoot.

Let’s get to it.