Lord Peter Wimsey

Dorothy L. Sayers wrote eleven Lord Peter Wimsey novels and four short story collections between 1923 and her death in 1957, with the last collection published posthumously in 1972. Lord Peter is the younger brother of the Duke of Denver, a wealthy English aristocrat who took up amateur detection after the First World War left him with intermittent shell shock and too much time on his hands. His investigator-batman Bunter, his Scotland Yard friend Inspector Charles Parker, his sister Lady Mary, and from Strong Poison onwards the mystery novelist Harriet Vane form the recurring cast around him. The novels in publication order are Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Strong Poison, The Five Red Herrings, Have His Carcase, Murder Must Advertise, The Nine Tailors, Gaudy Night, and Busman's Honeymoon. Read in publication order for the full Peter-Harriet romantic arc. Gaudy Night in particular gains substantially from being read after Strong Poison and Have His Carcase. The series is widely regarded as the high point of the English Golden Age of detective fiction.