Strong Poison, by Dorothy Sayers

Dorothy Sayers’ Peter Wimsey series takes an abrupt left turn with the fifth book, Strong Poison. Detective novelist Harriet Vane is on trial for the murder of her lover by arsenical poisoning. She had opportunity; they had been lovers. She had motive; she’d left him due to something he’d done. And she has know-how: she’s just written a novel involving arsenical poisoning, and is known to have had possession of some arsenic. Lord Peter, on the other hand is not so sure. It might have been suicide; it might have been murder by someone else. But he’s nearly certain that Vane is innocent.

Though they don’t come into the stories, Lord Peter has been presented to date as the sort of upper-class bachelor who has had a string of discreet mistresses and will likely never marry. But somehow Harriet Vane, whom he hardly knows, has gotten under his skin, and he’s besotted. Really, he has no evidence that she’s innocent; he simply doesn’t want her to be guilty. And here’s where it gets a little weird, because Miss Vane bears a passing resemblance to Dorothy Sayers herself. She’s single; she’s known to have been somewhat bohemian, and has publicly taken a lover; she’s an author of detective stories; and, well, this:

Her eyes, like dark smudges under the heavy square brows, seemed equally without fear and without hope.

It’s very odd, and Lord Peter doesn’t seem quite himself. Besottedness will do that, I suppose.

This was the first of the Peter Wimsey novels I read when I first discovered Sayers; I liked it well enough then to look further, but it always seemed a bit different than the others. That was many years ago, and I don’t believe I’d ever re-read until this past month. It holds up pretty well; I enjoyed it, and the solution was nicely complex. But still, it’s a little weird.