Poison for Two in the Library: a Lord Peter Wimsey overview
Lord Peter Wimsey has been described as the man whom God would have created if He’d had the money. He’s also the amateur detective protagonist of Dorothy L. Sayers’ series of 11 mystery novels and 21 short stories, set in Britain 1920s and 30s. Very rich, a brilliant criminologist, cricketer, hopeless romantic and a bit of a mental basket case, Poirot he ain’t.
A note on spoilers: the Wimsey books are murder mysteries. I’ve avoided giving away the solutions to any of the books, but as this is a series with major recurring characters, it’s fair to say that if major character A is around in book Y, then though a suspect they weren’t hanged for murder in book X.
When Dorothy L. Sayers, vicar’s daughter, single mother, motorbike rider, mystery fan and advertising executive, created Lord Peter Wimsey in the early 1920s she was looking for a way to make a bit of money, and reckoned a detective novel might be the way to do it. The first book, Whose Body? was published in 1923 and enough of a success to make it worth writing a second. Sales took off, and by the time Sayers had grown a bit sick of writing the books in the late 1930s (and got Jossed by the Abdication Crisis), she had made a lot of money, if nothing to rival her hero’s millions (we are never actually told exactly how rich Peter is, but the answer is evidently “Very”). The books were made into radio plays early on, and there was a TV series in the 1970s and another (from other books) in the 80s. It would be easy to call the books - set in country houses, London gentleman’s clubs, a shooting lodge, an Oxford college, and similar settings - cosies, but they are anything but. The England between the wars was a society in flux, and the books show it. Issues of feminism, sexuality, the rise of Fascism, the depression, and the demise of the aristocracy are all addressed. This isn’t a cosy, sunny, fossilised world.
Major characters
Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey
Yes, his middle name is Death. Peter, Wimsey, or Lord Peter depending on how well you know him (his lordship or my lord if you’re a servant or significantly socially inferior) is the younger son of the fourteenth Duke of Denver. As such he is pretty near the top of the social pecking order, albeit now somewhat redundant once his elder brother has married and produced an heir. Wimsey is short, slight, blond, “funny-lookin’” in the manner of the classic inbred aristocrat, with a pointy chin, big nose, and nice hands. He is supremely fit, likes clothes, and wears a monocle as a defence mechanism. His hobbies are detecting, cricket, driving fast cars, collecting early printed books, and having occasional nervous breakdowns. He’s charming, amiable, with oodles of charisma and a good dollop of sex-appeal, gets along with just about everyone but his brother and sister-in-law who think he’s letting the side down, litters his conversation with donchaknows, dropped letters, slang, and erudite quotations (there’s a 700 page encyclopaedia) and would be the perfect guest at any dinner party on any continent in any age. You can hear him being squeeishly fangirled here by Dame Stella Rimmington, former head of MI5. This is a man with friends in high places.
Born in 1890, Peter was educated at Eton, Balliol College Oxford (which unusually for the early twentieth century actually required its students to have significant brains), and by courtesans in Paris. At the age of 22 whilst still a student he fell violently in love and got engaged to Barbara, who never actually appears in the books. When WWI broke out, Wimsey, like a lot of other young men in his position, joined the army. He has a distinguished military career - up to the point when he discovers that Barbara has dumped him and married someone else, whereafter he spends two years trying and failing to get himself killed by being heroic in the war. He ends up with a bad case of shell shock, but is saved by the devoted friendship of Mervyn Bunter, his sergeant, who will later become his valet. Sworn off love, he stumbles into solving mysteries and keeps doing it because it is fun, and because it justifies his continued existence. Unfortunately, solving murders in the 1920s and 30s also involved sending the murderer to the gallows, causing the sort of angst that is a fic writer’s dream. He lives in a flat at 110A Piccadilly.
And that’s where the books start.
Mervyn Bunter
Mervyn Bunter is Lord Peter’s highly-paid valet. No-one ever actually calls him Mervyn. Personally, the main barrier I face when contemplating slash involving Bunter is the thought of anyone uttering “Mervyn” in the heat of passion. Bunter is not a replica of Jeeves. He occasionally does impressions of Jeeves, but whereas I fear that Reginald Jeeves would, though accepting the Revolution with regret, ultimately string Wooster from the nearest lamppost if push came to shove, Bunter would die in a hail of bullets defending his lord and master. We know very little about Bunter’s private life. He’s a year or two older than Peter, taller, better looking, intelligent, a keen photographer, who enters into his employer’s detective pursuits with enthusiasm. He dug Wimsey out of a shell-hole in the war, and has been periodically saving his life and sanity ever since and refusing to be thanked for it. The reader is given very little insight into his emotions, except to see that they are powerful when they break the icy surface. He has a very dry sense of humour, is known to do music-hall impressions to amuse his fellow-servants, and is a bit of a housemaid’s pin-up. He’s not above bad-mouthing Peter in the interests of an investigation, and regards his employer with a complex mixture of feelings; a combination of feudal spirit, respect, exasperation, amused tolerance, adoration, motherliness and possible sexual attraction (a man who canonically fantasises about what his employer is getting up to in bed is not a man in a simple relationship).
Charles Parker
Even Sherlock Holmes needed a police contact, and Detective Inspect (later Chief-Inspector) Charles Parker is Lord Peter’s. He’s a basically decent, earnest, middle-class, slightly socially conservative, religiously devout low church policeman about whom we know everything we need to know when we learn that he was educated at Barrow-in-Furness grammar school. His religious/social convictions occasionally cause problems between him and Peter - he’s definitely got a few hang-ups about women in non-traditional roles, though the man who buys his sister silk underwear from Paris for a present doesn’t entirely lack insight into the feminine soul. He falls heavily for Peter’s sister, Lady Mary, in the second book in the series, but his sense of social inferiority prevents his doing much about it until several books later. Parker features more heavily in the first five books, his place as confidant being taken in the later books by Harriet Vane.
Harriet Vane
The Wimsey universe essentially divides into two halves; pre-Harriet and post-Harriet (although there are couple of later books without her in them - one can be spiritually counted with the pre-H. party, the second otherwise). She divides readers as well; some can’t stand her, as the love interest who ‘spoilt’ the straightforward puzzle stories that the earlier books never actually were, and who also gets accused of being a bit of a Mary Sue. I’d argue she’s not (there are several better candidates, not least Peter himself), but there’s no doubt that her arrival turned the stories upside down. Sayers stated that she introduced Harriet in Strong Poison with the intention of marrying Peter off and thus killing him with a kinder Reichenbach Falls, but that at the end of the books the two protagonists simply refused to fall into one another’s arms. About ten years younger than Peter, Harriet Vane is an Oxford-educated writer of detective stories, an independent woman making her own way in the world, who gets accused of murdering her ex-lover (a pretty scandalous thing to have) with arsenic. Peter sees her in court, is instantly smitten and convinced of her innocence, and spends the rest of the book alternately tactlessly proposing marriage in the prison visiting room, and trying desperately to solve the case. He succeeds in the latter venture, but is firmly rebuffed in the former, and has to spend another couple of volumes in romantic pursuit before getting his reward. Harriet is tall, not fashionably pretty, doesn’t suffer fools gladly, rather prickly and very wary of Peter. Though arguably in love with him from the start, after getting rather badly bruised by the loathsome ex and court case, nonetheless she only doesn’t run a hundred miles in the opposite direction because she’s too tired. She is the POV for substantial chunks of the later books with her in them.
Minor characters - the family
The Dowager Duchess of Denver
Peter’s mother, a seemingly slightly dotty woman, from whom in fact he evidently inherited his brains, curiosity and pleasant character. She has a badly behaved Persian cat and a razor-sharp mind and was horribly wasted on the Victorians. Not the sort of character who gets fic written about her, but she crops up nicely in other people’s.
Lady Mary Wimsey
Peter’s younger sister, equally fed up of not being expected to do anything but marry well. A Communist in her youth, she has a couple of unsuccessful relationships before falling for and eventually marrying Charles Parker, even at the cost of casting off her pyjamas forever in favour of “the old-fashioned nightgown” she expects he prefers. She had Peter like one another, but don’t know each other very well, the age difference and the war getting in the way.
Gerald and Helen - the Duke and Duchess of Denver
Peter’s elder brother and sister-in-law. Gerald is a typical stuffed-shirt aristocrat; unimaginative, pompous, and thoroughly conventional. Though he doesn’t generally mean badly, he has absolutely no understanding of his younger brother and sister. An incorrigible womaniser, his worst mistake was to marry his cousin Helen, also unimaginative, and rather more unpleasant, to whom is given my favourite line of the corpus, “The lower orders are so prejudiced”. Helen finds Peter’s detective hobbies and mental fragility simply embarrassing. Gerald comes round a bit after he is accused of murdering Lady Mary’s fiancée in Clouds of Witness and Peter proves his innocence. Well, he’d have to. They have two children, a daughter we never meet, and a son, Lord Saint-George.
Viscount Saint-George
Saint-George, Peter’s nephew, who looks like the young Apollo on a good hair day. He appears in canon as an adorable young boy and a scapegrace young student, the latter prone to driving dangerously, getting involved with unsuitable women (and having a bit of a crush on Harriet), and spending money he hasn’t got.
Paul Delagardie
Peter’s mother’s brother, an old roué, significant for writing the biography of Peter that appears at the back of several of the books, and setting him up to learn the Noble Art of Shagging during his gap year before Oxford.
Other recurring minor characters
Miss Katherine Alexandra Climpson A spinster in her fifties, who runs a sort of secretarial agency-cum-detective outfit financed by Peter. Outwardly a conventional, slightly fussy middle-aged lady, she is courageous, an acute psychologist, and High Church Anglican who regularly has to deal with the conflict between what her conscience might believe at first thought, and what Peter Wimsey needs her to do in the interests of justice. Tends to speak in italics.
Sir Impey Biggs Genius barrister whom no woman would touch with a barge-pole, either because he’s obviously gay and men just haven’t noticed, or because he’s married to his profession.
Mr Murbles Old family solicitor, rather dry, the sort of old man who gets called sir by dukes
The Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot Peter’s old friend, about as bright as the average nice chap called Freddy in works of the period. Does show a spark of imagination and social unconventionality by marrying Rachel Levy, the Jewish daughter of the corpse in Whose Body?
The Books in Brief
Whose Body? In which Peter investigates the case of a corpse found in a bath. Important for fanfic because it’s our first glimpse of Peter’s fragile mental state and establishes the relationships between Wimsey, Bunter, and Parker.
Clouds of Witness Lady Mary’s fiancée is shot, and Peter has the angst of working out whether his brother or sister dunnit. Bunter saves his life again.
Unnatural Death I used to assume that this one had not been filmed in the 70s because several important characters are lesbians - in fact, it’s surely because it is All About Fine Points of Law and a bit dull, though there are some very good bits in it (and Peter and Parker sharing lavender-scented beds in pub bedrooms - why has no-one written about this?).
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club Another mystery about a will - Peter has to work out whether an elderly general or his sister died first on Armistice Day. Contains the first sniff of significant romance for Peter, with Marjorie Phelps, a sculptor, though it doesn’t go anywhere.
Strong Poison Love strikes across the court room. Parker and Mary get engaged.
Five Red Herrings Set in Scotland, with incomprehensible accents and indistinguishable artists. Not a popular one for fic.
Have His Carcase Harriet Vane goes on a hiking holiday and finds a corpse on the beach; Peter rushes to the scene in order to hang out with her and stop her being accused again. If the canon were a modern WIP, this would be the book with all the fandom speculation and theories about it.
Murder Must Advertises A chap by the name of Death Bredon takes a job in an advertising that has recently suffered a mysterious death of one of its employees. Lots of flirting by Peter in the line of duty, and all a bit wierd. I love it.
The Nine Tailors Peter crashes his car in the Fens, does some bell-ringing, and solves the mystery of a faceless corpse. He also picks up a young ward, Hilary Thorpe, who features in the odd fic.
Gaudy Night The masterwork. Harriet is asked to solve a mystery in her old college, and Peter doesn’t turn up for 200 pages. Has a very hot scene in a punt.
Busman’s Honeymoon Our Heroes get married, and find a corpse in the cellar of their honeymoon cottage. Lots of hurt/comfort.
There are also two ‘authorised’ sequels/continuations by Jill Paton Walsh, based to a greater and lesser extent on papers by Sayers, Thrones, Dominations set in London just after Busman’s Honeymoon and A Presumption of Death, set during WWII. Some people like them, some don’t. Except for the couple with Harriet in, the short stories don’t get a lot of fandom attention.
The Fandom
It’s not exactly a big fandom, and whilst there’s a high percentage of quality fic to dross, on the other hand, this doesn’t actually mean there’s a great deal of either. There’s a relatively high proportion of cross-over fics, notably with Harry Potter (everything crosses over with Harry Potter) and Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell. Happily, Sayers herself wrote fanfic and crossovers, including a short radio play in which six year old Lord Peter goes to Sherlock Holmes for help in finding his lost kitten (it has got stuck under the mattress), so the writer in the Wimseyverse needn’t worry too much about what the original author would have thought of it all, although no doubt the Estate would take a different view.
There is no primary fandom archive. There is a clutch of fics at Yuletide (and 18 requests this year), a few at fanfiction.net, and a couple of LJ communities at which you may find links, but otherwise it’s pretty much a matter of trawling the internet and seeing what you can find - a scattered, but enthusiastic bunch of people writing some good stuff. Sayers isn’t the easiest of writers to fic - she was a very distinct style - but she’s very rewarding.
What do people write? There’s a decent bit of gen out there - it’s a mystery series, and the intrepid have a go at writing them. The obvious het pairing is Harriet/Peter (with the odd bit of Parker/Mary), and the two slash pairings are Peter/Parker and Peter/Bunter. The slash seems to have a lot more people wishing for it than people writing it. Anyone who fancies writing explicit Peter/Bunter is guaranteed an audience, just as long as the readers can find it.
The following LJ communities are not fic communities, but have had fic posted or linked on them: talboys, rarelitslash, reading_sayers. placet is a HarryPotter/Wimseyverse fic project.
ETA:Readers interested in comment on the books may enjoy truepenny's
fascinating discussions (spoiler warning!).
A note on spoilers: the Wimsey books are murder mysteries. I’ve avoided giving away the solutions to any of the books, but as this is a series with major recurring characters, it’s fair to say that if major character A is around in book Y, then though a suspect they weren’t hanged for murder in book X.
When Dorothy L. Sayers, vicar’s daughter, single mother, motorbike rider, mystery fan and advertising executive, created Lord Peter Wimsey in the early 1920s she was looking for a way to make a bit of money, and reckoned a detective novel might be the way to do it. The first book, Whose Body? was published in 1923 and enough of a success to make it worth writing a second. Sales took off, and by the time Sayers had grown a bit sick of writing the books in the late 1930s (and got Jossed by the Abdication Crisis), she had made a lot of money, if nothing to rival her hero’s millions (we are never actually told exactly how rich Peter is, but the answer is evidently “Very”). The books were made into radio plays early on, and there was a TV series in the 1970s and another (from other books) in the 80s. It would be easy to call the books - set in country houses, London gentleman’s clubs, a shooting lodge, an Oxford college, and similar settings - cosies, but they are anything but. The England between the wars was a society in flux, and the books show it. Issues of feminism, sexuality, the rise of Fascism, the depression, and the demise of the aristocracy are all addressed. This isn’t a cosy, sunny, fossilised world.
Major characters
Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey
Yes, his middle name is Death. Peter, Wimsey, or Lord Peter depending on how well you know him (his lordship or my lord if you’re a servant or significantly socially inferior) is the younger son of the fourteenth Duke of Denver. As such he is pretty near the top of the social pecking order, albeit now somewhat redundant once his elder brother has married and produced an heir. Wimsey is short, slight, blond, “funny-lookin’” in the manner of the classic inbred aristocrat, with a pointy chin, big nose, and nice hands. He is supremely fit, likes clothes, and wears a monocle as a defence mechanism. His hobbies are detecting, cricket, driving fast cars, collecting early printed books, and having occasional nervous breakdowns. He’s charming, amiable, with oodles of charisma and a good dollop of sex-appeal, gets along with just about everyone but his brother and sister-in-law who think he’s letting the side down, litters his conversation with donchaknows, dropped letters, slang, and erudite quotations (there’s a 700 page encyclopaedia) and would be the perfect guest at any dinner party on any continent in any age. You can hear him being squeeishly fangirled here by Dame Stella Rimmington, former head of MI5. This is a man with friends in high places.
Born in 1890, Peter was educated at Eton, Balliol College Oxford (which unusually for the early twentieth century actually required its students to have significant brains), and by courtesans in Paris. At the age of 22 whilst still a student he fell violently in love and got engaged to Barbara, who never actually appears in the books. When WWI broke out, Wimsey, like a lot of other young men in his position, joined the army. He has a distinguished military career - up to the point when he discovers that Barbara has dumped him and married someone else, whereafter he spends two years trying and failing to get himself killed by being heroic in the war. He ends up with a bad case of shell shock, but is saved by the devoted friendship of Mervyn Bunter, his sergeant, who will later become his valet. Sworn off love, he stumbles into solving mysteries and keeps doing it because it is fun, and because it justifies his continued existence. Unfortunately, solving murders in the 1920s and 30s also involved sending the murderer to the gallows, causing the sort of angst that is a fic writer’s dream. He lives in a flat at 110A Piccadilly.
And that’s where the books start.
Mervyn Bunter
Mervyn Bunter is Lord Peter’s highly-paid valet. No-one ever actually calls him Mervyn. Personally, the main barrier I face when contemplating slash involving Bunter is the thought of anyone uttering “Mervyn” in the heat of passion. Bunter is not a replica of Jeeves. He occasionally does impressions of Jeeves, but whereas I fear that Reginald Jeeves would, though accepting the Revolution with regret, ultimately string Wooster from the nearest lamppost if push came to shove, Bunter would die in a hail of bullets defending his lord and master. We know very little about Bunter’s private life. He’s a year or two older than Peter, taller, better looking, intelligent, a keen photographer, who enters into his employer’s detective pursuits with enthusiasm. He dug Wimsey out of a shell-hole in the war, and has been periodically saving his life and sanity ever since and refusing to be thanked for it. The reader is given very little insight into his emotions, except to see that they are powerful when they break the icy surface. He has a very dry sense of humour, is known to do music-hall impressions to amuse his fellow-servants, and is a bit of a housemaid’s pin-up. He’s not above bad-mouthing Peter in the interests of an investigation, and regards his employer with a complex mixture of feelings; a combination of feudal spirit, respect, exasperation, amused tolerance, adoration, motherliness and possible sexual attraction (a man who canonically fantasises about what his employer is getting up to in bed is not a man in a simple relationship).
Charles Parker
Even Sherlock Holmes needed a police contact, and Detective Inspect (later Chief-Inspector) Charles Parker is Lord Peter’s. He’s a basically decent, earnest, middle-class, slightly socially conservative, religiously devout low church policeman about whom we know everything we need to know when we learn that he was educated at Barrow-in-Furness grammar school. His religious/social convictions occasionally cause problems between him and Peter - he’s definitely got a few hang-ups about women in non-traditional roles, though the man who buys his sister silk underwear from Paris for a present doesn’t entirely lack insight into the feminine soul. He falls heavily for Peter’s sister, Lady Mary, in the second book in the series, but his sense of social inferiority prevents his doing much about it until several books later. Parker features more heavily in the first five books, his place as confidant being taken in the later books by Harriet Vane.
Harriet Vane
The Wimsey universe essentially divides into two halves; pre-Harriet and post-Harriet (although there are couple of later books without her in them - one can be spiritually counted with the pre-H. party, the second otherwise). She divides readers as well; some can’t stand her, as the love interest who ‘spoilt’ the straightforward puzzle stories that the earlier books never actually were, and who also gets accused of being a bit of a Mary Sue. I’d argue she’s not (there are several better candidates, not least Peter himself), but there’s no doubt that her arrival turned the stories upside down. Sayers stated that she introduced Harriet in Strong Poison with the intention of marrying Peter off and thus killing him with a kinder Reichenbach Falls, but that at the end of the books the two protagonists simply refused to fall into one another’s arms. About ten years younger than Peter, Harriet Vane is an Oxford-educated writer of detective stories, an independent woman making her own way in the world, who gets accused of murdering her ex-lover (a pretty scandalous thing to have) with arsenic. Peter sees her in court, is instantly smitten and convinced of her innocence, and spends the rest of the book alternately tactlessly proposing marriage in the prison visiting room, and trying desperately to solve the case. He succeeds in the latter venture, but is firmly rebuffed in the former, and has to spend another couple of volumes in romantic pursuit before getting his reward. Harriet is tall, not fashionably pretty, doesn’t suffer fools gladly, rather prickly and very wary of Peter. Though arguably in love with him from the start, after getting rather badly bruised by the loathsome ex and court case, nonetheless she only doesn’t run a hundred miles in the opposite direction because she’s too tired. She is the POV for substantial chunks of the later books with her in them.
Minor characters - the family
The Dowager Duchess of Denver
Peter’s mother, a seemingly slightly dotty woman, from whom in fact he evidently inherited his brains, curiosity and pleasant character. She has a badly behaved Persian cat and a razor-sharp mind and was horribly wasted on the Victorians. Not the sort of character who gets fic written about her, but she crops up nicely in other people’s.
Lady Mary Wimsey
Peter’s younger sister, equally fed up of not being expected to do anything but marry well. A Communist in her youth, she has a couple of unsuccessful relationships before falling for and eventually marrying Charles Parker, even at the cost of casting off her pyjamas forever in favour of “the old-fashioned nightgown” she expects he prefers. She had Peter like one another, but don’t know each other very well, the age difference and the war getting in the way.
Gerald and Helen - the Duke and Duchess of Denver
Peter’s elder brother and sister-in-law. Gerald is a typical stuffed-shirt aristocrat; unimaginative, pompous, and thoroughly conventional. Though he doesn’t generally mean badly, he has absolutely no understanding of his younger brother and sister. An incorrigible womaniser, his worst mistake was to marry his cousin Helen, also unimaginative, and rather more unpleasant, to whom is given my favourite line of the corpus, “The lower orders are so prejudiced”. Helen finds Peter’s detective hobbies and mental fragility simply embarrassing. Gerald comes round a bit after he is accused of murdering Lady Mary’s fiancée in Clouds of Witness and Peter proves his innocence. Well, he’d have to. They have two children, a daughter we never meet, and a son, Lord Saint-George.
Viscount Saint-George
Saint-George, Peter’s nephew, who looks like the young Apollo on a good hair day. He appears in canon as an adorable young boy and a scapegrace young student, the latter prone to driving dangerously, getting involved with unsuitable women (and having a bit of a crush on Harriet), and spending money he hasn’t got.
Paul Delagardie
Peter’s mother’s brother, an old roué, significant for writing the biography of Peter that appears at the back of several of the books, and setting him up to learn the Noble Art of Shagging during his gap year before Oxford.
Other recurring minor characters
Miss Katherine Alexandra Climpson A spinster in her fifties, who runs a sort of secretarial agency-cum-detective outfit financed by Peter. Outwardly a conventional, slightly fussy middle-aged lady, she is courageous, an acute psychologist, and High Church Anglican who regularly has to deal with the conflict between what her conscience might believe at first thought, and what Peter Wimsey needs her to do in the interests of justice. Tends to speak in italics.
Sir Impey Biggs Genius barrister whom no woman would touch with a barge-pole, either because he’s obviously gay and men just haven’t noticed, or because he’s married to his profession.
Mr Murbles Old family solicitor, rather dry, the sort of old man who gets called sir by dukes
The Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot Peter’s old friend, about as bright as the average nice chap called Freddy in works of the period. Does show a spark of imagination and social unconventionality by marrying Rachel Levy, the Jewish daughter of the corpse in Whose Body?
The Books in Brief
Whose Body? In which Peter investigates the case of a corpse found in a bath. Important for fanfic because it’s our first glimpse of Peter’s fragile mental state and establishes the relationships between Wimsey, Bunter, and Parker.
Clouds of Witness Lady Mary’s fiancée is shot, and Peter has the angst of working out whether his brother or sister dunnit. Bunter saves his life again.
Unnatural Death I used to assume that this one had not been filmed in the 70s because several important characters are lesbians - in fact, it’s surely because it is All About Fine Points of Law and a bit dull, though there are some very good bits in it (and Peter and Parker sharing lavender-scented beds in pub bedrooms - why has no-one written about this?).
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club Another mystery about a will - Peter has to work out whether an elderly general or his sister died first on Armistice Day. Contains the first sniff of significant romance for Peter, with Marjorie Phelps, a sculptor, though it doesn’t go anywhere.
Strong Poison Love strikes across the court room. Parker and Mary get engaged.
Five Red Herrings Set in Scotland, with incomprehensible accents and indistinguishable artists. Not a popular one for fic.
Have His Carcase Harriet Vane goes on a hiking holiday and finds a corpse on the beach; Peter rushes to the scene in order to hang out with her and stop her being accused again. If the canon were a modern WIP, this would be the book with all the fandom speculation and theories about it.
Murder Must Advertises A chap by the name of Death Bredon takes a job in an advertising that has recently suffered a mysterious death of one of its employees. Lots of flirting by Peter in the line of duty, and all a bit wierd. I love it.
The Nine Tailors Peter crashes his car in the Fens, does some bell-ringing, and solves the mystery of a faceless corpse. He also picks up a young ward, Hilary Thorpe, who features in the odd fic.
Gaudy Night The masterwork. Harriet is asked to solve a mystery in her old college, and Peter doesn’t turn up for 200 pages. Has a very hot scene in a punt.
Busman’s Honeymoon Our Heroes get married, and find a corpse in the cellar of their honeymoon cottage. Lots of hurt/comfort.
There are also two ‘authorised’ sequels/continuations by Jill Paton Walsh, based to a greater and lesser extent on papers by Sayers, Thrones, Dominations set in London just after Busman’s Honeymoon and A Presumption of Death, set during WWII. Some people like them, some don’t. Except for the couple with Harriet in, the short stories don’t get a lot of fandom attention.
The Fandom
It’s not exactly a big fandom, and whilst there’s a high percentage of quality fic to dross, on the other hand, this doesn’t actually mean there’s a great deal of either. There’s a relatively high proportion of cross-over fics, notably with Harry Potter (everything crosses over with Harry Potter) and Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell. Happily, Sayers herself wrote fanfic and crossovers, including a short radio play in which six year old Lord Peter goes to Sherlock Holmes for help in finding his lost kitten (it has got stuck under the mattress), so the writer in the Wimseyverse needn’t worry too much about what the original author would have thought of it all, although no doubt the Estate would take a different view.
There is no primary fandom archive. There is a clutch of fics at Yuletide (and 18 requests this year), a few at fanfiction.net, and a couple of LJ communities at which you may find links, but otherwise it’s pretty much a matter of trawling the internet and seeing what you can find - a scattered, but enthusiastic bunch of people writing some good stuff. Sayers isn’t the easiest of writers to fic - she was a very distinct style - but she’s very rewarding.
What do people write? There’s a decent bit of gen out there - it’s a mystery series, and the intrepid have a go at writing them. The obvious het pairing is Harriet/Peter (with the odd bit of Parker/Mary), and the two slash pairings are Peter/Parker and Peter/Bunter. The slash seems to have a lot more people wishing for it than people writing it. Anyone who fancies writing explicit Peter/Bunter is guaranteed an audience, just as long as the readers can find it.
The following LJ communities are not fic communities, but have had fic posted or linked on them: talboys, rarelitslash, reading_sayers. placet is a HarryPotter/Wimseyverse fic project.
ETA:Readers interested in comment on the books may enjoy truepenny's
fascinating discussions (spoiler warning!).