Busman’s Honeymoon

Busman’s Honeymoon was published in 1937 and is the eleventh and final Lord Peter Wimsey novel that Sayers completed. Peter and Harriet are finally married, on a deliberately small ceremony, and have retreated to a recently purchased Tudor farmhouse in Hertfordshire for their honeymoon. They arrive late at night and immediately discover the body of the previous owner, Mr. Noakes, in the cellar of the house they have just bought.

The novel is structurally unusual. The honeymoon material with Peter and Harriet getting used to each other as a married couple is the central preoccupation of the book. The murder investigation runs underneath. Sayers had originally written the story as a play, and the dialogue carries much of the work. The eventual solution is well constructed but matters less than the marriage being depicted. The final pages, in which Peter prepares emotionally to attend the killer’s execution, are some of the most morally serious writing Sayers ever did. As a conclusion to the series this works extremely well, both as romance and as recognition of what detection costs.