Review: Thrones, Dominations (Lord Peter Wimsey) by Dorothy L Sayers (5-Jun-2014) Paperback

Thrones, Dominations (Lord Peter Wimsey) by Dorothy L Sayers (5-Jun-2014) Paperback by Dorothy L. Sayers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One of the reasons we admire the work of particular authors is that they do something that nobody else can do. It might be possible to pastiche their works, but they're essentially inimitable. So if, after their death, another author attempts to extend the series, all too often it ends up as bad fanfiction (there is such a thing as good fanfiction, but Sturgeon's Law applies). I'm thinking here of Eoin Colfer's awful sixth book in the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy, or the review of Sebastian Faulks' continuation of the Jeeves series which runs "FAULKS stop WHAT ORANGE BLOSSOMS stop WHY ORANGE BLOSSOMS stop CONSIDER YOUR PLOT THE FROZEN LIMIT stop WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY PLANTING YOUR LOATHSOME BEAZELS ON MY HEROES LIKE THIS stop DEEPLY REGRET YOUR HEAD HUNDRED MILES FROM ETHEREAL REALM AS UNABLE TO HIT YOU WITH BRICK stop LOVE PLUM".

So I approached this continuation of the Lord Peter Wimsey series with more than a little trepidation. Technically, it is partly by Dorothy L. Sayers; she began the book and set it aside for other work, and the incomplete draft was found in a publisher's safe and passed to the already respected crime novelist Jill Paton Walsh to finish.

I have to say, I was favourably impressed. It felt like a Lord Peter Wimsey novel, even to the persistent fault of introducing a lot of similar, and inadequately distinguished, characters all in a bunch, though it didn't have the persistent fault of going so deeply into some obscure area of knowledge that the reader has to just let it wash over them, aware that a lot of nuance is being missed. It builds on and extends the relationship established between the newlywed couple of Lord Peter and Harriet Vane in the last book completed by Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon , without (as far as I was concerned) contradicting what that book and its predecessor, Gaudy Night , had established about the characters individually and as a couple. Like several previous books, it teases me with a mention of Miss Climpson, my favourite character in the series, but doesn't bring her onstage. It quotes and references English literature like a Wimsey novel. I'm happy to accept it as a Wimsey novel, and a good one, though not one of the best; I enjoyed it about as much as Have His Carcase , which I liked.

It takes a third of the book to get to the actual crime, but the setup is (mostly) necessary. There are several subplots concerning Harriet's integration into Peter's world, her ambivalence about continuing to write, her sister-in-law Helen's disapproval of her, and Peter's valet Bunter's relationship with another photographer. Harriet gains a lady's maid, who has the unlikely surname of Mango; a few of the new characters struck me as having Dickensian names, more so than in previous books, where the names have tended to be characteristic of the place where the crime occurs. Mango gets a chance to shine as an undercover operative in the solution of the crime at one point.

The main crime itself - the murder of a woman with whom Peter and Harriet are slightly acquainted - has a personal dimension for them, and the authors do a wonderful job of compare-and-contrast between the dead woman's relationship with her husband and the very different "marriage of true minds" that Peter and Harriet are striving for. The detective couple's self-doubt and mutual support are both very much in evidence.

For me, at least, this works as an extension of a beloved series with distinctive characters who have grown across the series, and continue to grow in ways that make sense for their complex personalities. It's also a good detective mystery.

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