Home >  A & E >  Books

'Thrones, Dominations' by Dorothy L. Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh

Finished After More Than 60 Years, Sayers' Whodunit Is Slow But Satisfying

Sunday, April 05, 1998

By LEN BARCOUSKY, POST-GAZETTE STAFF WRITER

	Thrones, Dominations By Dorothy L. Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh St. Martin's Press $23.95

Finished After More Than 60 Years, Sayers' Whodunit Is Slow But Satisfying

Thrones, Dominations" is a very clever book by two very smart women who never met. Completed more than 60 years after it was begun, it was worth waiting for.

That's not to say it's an ideal mystery. Very little happens in the first 112 meandering pages. The story that slowly unfolds seems more like a domestic tale by Anthony Trollope than a whodunit.

Then someone is found murdered.

It's not for another 40 pages that Dorothy L. Sayers, or perhaps Jill Paton Walsh, explains why it took so long to crank up the plot machinery. The author says that it is the duty of mystery writers "to convey the disruption, the hideousness of murder." The reader, therefore, must care about the characters. The author's task is to "make the body . . . more than a conundrum, to make the victim pitiful, and real.

In 1936, Sayers gave up writing her very successful series of mystery novels and devoted herself to writing religious works and translating Dante.

She had by that time completed a half dozen draft chapters and a plot outline for a 12th novel featuring her titled amateur sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey. She died in 1957 without returning to her final Wimsey manuscript.

Two years ago, Paton Walsh and the Sayers' estate agreed that she should finish the book. Paton Walsh is herself a writer of mysteries and a 1994 finalist for the Booker Prize, the British version of the National Book Award.

The seamless result is a deftly organized domestic mystery, meaning that it contains much more detail about British housekeeping and habits than about sleuthing.

The book is set in 1936, shortly after Wimsey and Harriet Vane, his new bride, have returned to London after their honeymoon. Vane, like Sayers and

Paton Walsh, is an Oxford graduate and a suc cessful mystery writer.

The recurring theme developed in "Thrones, Dominations" is the critical importance of discovering and then doing one's duty: to spouse, to tradition, to art, to employer, to community, to country. It sounds dry, but Sayers and

Paton Walsh bring it to life.

Lord Peter and Harriet find themselves in a rapidly changing world. George V dies, and Edward VIII becomes the uncrowned king. One of the minor subplots involves Wimsey's frantic efforts to deal with the new king's pro-German sympathies. Edward and his future bride, Wallis Simpson, are one of four main couples whose stories are loosely interlinked throughout the book.

Laurence and Rosamund Harwell are the second. He is a wealthy theater producer who married a beautiful woman from a disgraced family. They appear to love each other madly, but Rosamund has been so wounded by her father's crimes that she needs constant reassurance from her smitten husband.

Lord Peter and Harriet are clearly the writers' ideal couple. While they are loving and supportive, their new marriage is not without strain. Harriet faces the very modern problem of how to meet extensive family obligations and keep up with her own work.

Then just to show that a passionate relationship between intellectual equals is not a fluke, Sayers and Paton Walsh create a romance for Mervyn Bunter, Wimsey's loyal valet. With the help of Harriet Vane, Bunter and his intended, a professional photographer named Hope Fanshaw, are able to work out an arrangement - another variation on the "duty" theme - that allows Bunter to continue to serve Lord Peter and Miss Fanshaw to serve her craft. All this social interplay makes "Thrones, Dominations" seem more like Jane Austen than Dame Agatha.

In "Thrones . . . ," the plot twists are few and the suspense is minimal. But there is sudden death, a mysterious disappearance, a surfeit of suspects and a gloomy stroll through London sewers in search of a body.

By novel's end, all the pieces have been fit into place. All in all, it has been a pleasure to spend a few hours with Lord Peter and Harriet again.