On the Coffee Table: Clouds of Witness

Title: Clouds of Witness

Author: Dorothy L. Sayers

via Wikipedia

Aristocratic amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey is back.  This time, his own brother Gerald, the Duke of Denver, is suspected of murder.  Denis Cathcart, fiancé of their sister, Mary, has been found shot to death outside the family's hunting lodge in Yorkshire.  Gerald is discovered with the body and can't - or won't - provide a convincing alibi for where he was at the time of the shooting.  Lord Peter's investigations take him all the way to New York and back, unraveling several twisted tales of love and betrayal.  

In this, my third Wimsey book, I'm starting to piece together the essential differences between Dorothy L. Sayers's approach to mystery and that of the authors with which she's most frequently compared, namely Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.  Unlike the others, Sayers didn't go in for the sensational, even occasionally contrived, solutions.  If anything, the whodunnit aspects of her stories are predictable and/or pedestrian.  She was more fascinated by legal process - coroner inquests, court trials and the like - than detective craft.  Social satire of England in the early 1920s drives her style and the sensational aspects of her books are presented more in this topical light: trans-Atlantic flight, the well-to-do dabbling in communism and opportunistic journalists and photographers fawning over Peter's celebrity.  

And brilliant as he is, Lord Peter's leading characteristic is still goofy.

There are some fun food elements, particular regarding the niche interests of this blogger.  19th century vintage wines are discussed, particularly an 1875 port that has gone off.  Peter has a charmingly cheeky view of cocktails:

"Well, well," said Mr. Murbles, beaming mildly, "let's make a start.  I fear, my dear young people, I am old-fashioned enough not to have adopted the modern practice of cocktail-drinking."

"Quite right too," said Wimsey emphatically.  "Ruins the palate and spoils the digestion.  Not an English custom -- rank sacrilege in this old Inn.  Came from America -- result, Prohibition.  That's what happens to people, who don't know how to drink," 

Unnatural Death is next in the series.