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

Cover of Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers. Image via Open Road Media, digital publishers of this edition.

2. Harriet Vane

Finally, we’ve reached the top two reasons to read the Lord Peter Wimsey series. We’ve also reached what we promised we would: the chance to talk about Harriet Vane a little bit more without spoiling anything other than what we’ve already spoiled.

She’s a writer of crime fiction with a great wit and a wide-ranging knowledge of certain subjects. Did we just describe Dorothy L. Sayers or Harriet Vane? Even Wikipedia’s article on the fictional character points these similarities out, so it’s rather obvious even if you’re just reading these books for fun and not for the mystery-solving aspects. However, that doesn’t make Harriet a boring or irritating character. For one, she doesn’t immediately end up with her love interest and actually ends up growing and changing throughout the novels in which she appears.

We’ve already extolled the virtues of the first exchange in Strong Poison, but we mean it when we say that between that and Gaudy Night as a whole, you’ll almost certainly come to love Harriet Vane.

Also, she has the 1920’s version of the strange search engine history combined with the now-infamous “it’s for a book” excuse in Strong Poison.

As someone who occasionally has a very interesting Google history, I can relate.