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

Cover to Lord Peter Views the Body, by Dorothy L. Sayers. Image via Open Road Media, digital publishers of this edition.

11. Detective Inspector Parker

Speaking of Charles Parker, let’s take a minute to discuss him a little bit. Since Sayers likes to namecheck Sherlock Holmes quite a bit herself, we’ll frame this in comparison with Lestrade. First off, Charles Parker actually gets a real first name. That’s right, we don’t even know Lestrade’s first name, to go by the original Arthur Conan Doyle canon.

But more interestingly, Detective Inspector Parker has a working relationship with Lord Peter. In fact, it’s very fair to say that they’re really good friends. The two of them certainly have their strengths, though. (To put it succinctly, his lordship has a lot of money and a lot of friends, but Parker has the Metropolitan Police.)

It’s also hard to avoid the idea that Sayers had Lestrade in mind when she wrote Parker’s inner monologue complaining a bit about having to do some of the boring parts of detection. She just took that type of character and made him less bumbling and more generally competent.

Parker also gets to grow and change as the series progresses. The novels actually take place in real time, and so he moves up from a sergeant to a detective inspector to chief inspector — a reward for his diligence. No, he may not be quite as flat-out brilliant as the protagonist of the series, but he fits in well enough nevertheless.