Book #90: Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers

I am a sucker for a good mystery, although I don't read all that many of them unless they are Agatha Christie, Maisie Dobbs, or came recommended to me by someone. I would never just go to the mystery section and pick one out off the shelf--there are too many and I am only interested in reading the good ones! But I felt like Sayers has popped up (very positively) in several book blogs and Facebook posts that I've noticed lately, particularly Gaudy Night, and I decided I wanted to check her out. It's the tenth novel featuring Sayers' pet detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, and although obviously I haven't read any other books by her, I was able to understand the characters and what was going on without too much trouble.

Wimsey is not the main character or narrator in this book, however; that honor goes to Harriet Vane, his love interest who hasn't reciprocated towards him yet. Vane is a detective novelist with a shady past (she and Peter met while he helped her get out of a wrongful accusation of having murdered her live-in boyfriend), and she goes to revisit her college days at Shrewsbury College at Oxford for a college reunion (called a Gaudy, for some reason). While there, she gets wrapped up in a rather mysterious situation with evil, anonymous notes being sent to professors and students all over the campus, and she agrees to stay and help investigate all of the violence and damage being done to the school. In the end, Wimsey comes to help figure out what's going on, and they find the culprit after an exciting attack (as usual). Wimsey's and Vane's relationship is also developed over the course of the novel and comes to a romantic conclusion at the end.

I don't know if you could compare this novel to an Agatha Christie. Christie is dead focused on the plot of the mystery--every single detail and character and event is calculated and meant to forward the story along or to provide some sort of clue that will be referenced later. This book was obviously much, much more rounded out and focused on a lot more of the character development and the themes of women's education and the roles of women in a changing world (the book was published in the mid-1930s). Harriet and the female professors and administrators of the college have plenty of conversations and discussions about the right of women's education, the role of single vs. married women, etc., and a lot of the conversation and discussions even went over my head because it was so complex. The perpetrator of the crimes was actually motivated in large part against women working and being education, specifically these women. But I actually kind of liked that element to it--I felt like it was more than just a "murder mystery"--not that I think that I'm above that sort of thing, but it was a different genre than I'm used to encountering and I liked that. I was just looking this book up and reading a little about it and saw that it's been called the first "feminist mystery novel"--which definitely seems justified.

All in all, this was much more complex than I was expecting to get, but it was so very enjoyable. I am hoping to find more of Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novels and get through them soon.