Customer Reviews

Thrones, Dominations (A Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery)

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

When I finished reading the last page of the last Lord Peter story I was sad because there weren't anymore and since Ms Sayers had died there weren't going to be anymore. I was delighted when I discovered that someone had picked up the story. Is Ms Walsh's writing just the same as Ms Sayers? No, of course not, but she does have a good feel for the subject, I enjoyed THRONES, DOMINATIONS greatly.

The story picks up a few months after BUSMAN'S HONEYMOON. Lord Peter and Harriet have returned to their London residence, Harriet is still trying to adjust to her new lifestyle and both are struggling with Peter's family. A murder takes place involving a young couple with which they are acquainted. Peter and Parker solve the crime with the assistance of Harriet and Bunter.

The scenes of the Wimseys' domestic life are wonderful, and well written. Harriet finally standing up to her overbearing sister-in-law is fantastic! There are many delightful journal enteries from the Dowager Duchess as well as scenes with many old friends from previous novels.

The flaws I found were really more in the editing than the writing. Some passages could have been trimmed a bit, perhaps others even eliminated since fans of Lord Peter and Harriet Vane really don't need to be reminded of the back story. More details about the time period, particularly Edward and Mrs Simpson, the rise of Hitler and the changing of societal rules were added in this work than in the original stories but Ms Sayers was writing for a contemporary audience while Ms Walsh's readers are separated from the era by seventy years.

I'm giving this book five stars not because it's any rival to "Crime and Punishment", but because the critical reviews are so completely off base. Paton Walsh's writing style is in many ways an improvement on Sayers, who too often in her later books allowed her characters to natter on ad nauseam in an annoyingly twee, look-how-learned-I-am fashion. In terms of Wimsey-Vane character development and plotting, "Thrones, Dominations" is head and shoulders above "Have His Carcase" and on a par with "Strong Poison", if not "Gaudy Night" which admittedly stands alone. Paton Walsh also skillfully and entertainingly weaves in pre-WW II British and European politics -- e.g. the death of George V, the fascinating dilemmas posed by Edward VIII, etc. -- which Sayers herself referred to only vaguely, most often as a way to get Lord Peter out of the country and delay the solution of the mystery du jour. One suspects Sayers was bored by the events of the day; Paton Walsh is anything but, and the new dimension adds richness and interest.

Oh yes -- the mystery itself isn't half bad (LOVE that walk through the London sewers!)

With the exception of her Dante translation, I have devoured virtually Dorothy Sayers' entire output, mystery and theology. I believe divine Dottie is the most brilliant woman produced by the 20th century, and I look upon Lord Peter and Harriet Vane with near-worship, as my favorite literary couple, with Darcy and Lizzie running a close second.

If Jill Paton Walsh had written nothing else, this would stand as a career-defining triumph. I was incredulous when another Sayers aficianado told me that an Oxford alum had mustered the overweening chutzpah to touch divine Dottie and finish "Thrones, Dominations." It would not (and could not) be "The Nine Tailors" or "Gaudy Night"--Dottie herself was growing bored with Lord Peter by the time she novelized the play "Busman's Honeymoon" and could not have approached the brilliance of either masterpiece, even if she had lived to complete the novel herself. But I was floored, positively floored, by Walsh's accomplishment. As the concluding Author's Note states, Sayers' "Gaudy Night" inspired Walsh to go to Oxford, and this is Walsh's thank-you, a painstaking labor of love.

In "Thrones, Dominations," the almost idyllic Wimsey union is paralleled by a more troubled, more forced, more fake marriage between a shallow, stupid beauty (think Dian Momerie of Peter's former acquaintance) and a theatre man--until the shallow beauty, whom the brilliant, honest Harriet was attempting to befriend with predictable difficulty, turns up dead. The ensuing mystery unfolds with Sayeresque twists and turns, and Walsh can be forgiven for not bewildering the reader with several apparently airtight alibis and plausible murderers, as Sayers and only a handful of other mystery writers have been able to do.

How did Walsh do it? How did she maintain Peter and Harriet's delicious tete-a-tetes sprinkled with literary allusions, while settling them into a believable post-honeymoon life with the pressures of writing, detection, a certain opera singer from Peter's playboy days, and Harriet's morning sickness? We could quibble over some new shades of characterization; whether Helen, Duchess of Denver, was ever this godawful, for instance, or whether Bunter was ever intended by Sayers to marry, given the discovery of an unpublished short story by Sayers in which Bunter is still a bachelor butler chasing after the three junior Wimseys. But Walsh pulls it off, beautifully. Given the loving artfulness with which Harriet and Peter accommodate a prospective Mrs. Bunter, which are so thoroughly in character, I cannot find fault with Walsh's liberties in getting Bunter a bride.

Walsh is particularly brilliant to make use of one of Sayers' most enthralling narrative techniques: the Dowager Duchess's faithful daily diary. The Dowager is eerily spot-on, 99% accurate.

If I must quibble with something, my biggest (minor) gripe would be that the murder itself has a sexual element that divine Dottie would likely never have considered, making "Thrones, Dominations" a decidedly modern novel in spite of all the major characters and their patterns of interaction having been set by Sayers half a century ago. However, in a novel in which Harriet and Peter are watching the rise of the Third Reich and discussing the threat of modern warfare, even the sexual component seems to fit; it seems like a carefully crafted foreshadowing of things just over the horizon. Sayers herself had prophetic gifts. "Thrones" is at least as good as some of Sayers' lesser Lord Peter outings. As an addition to the other Harriet-and-Peter novels, I found it entertaining and satistying. I can't believe Walsh even tried it, but I'm very glad she did.

Walsh uses a heavy hand to plaster over her lack of any real sense of the characters with irrelevant historical detail and misused motifs from the Wimsey canon. If you are a Wimsey fanatic, you won't be able to keep yourself from reading it, but be forewarned; you will find none of the graceful erudition, effortlessly reproduced vernacular, or delightful wordplay you found in Dorothy Sayer's completed works.

Just as a forged painting is ultimately recognized as a product of its own time, every completion or pastiche of a dead author's work reveals itself as of our time. "Thrones, Dominations" is no exception. A few examples: There are too many mentions of genuine 1930's historical figures, something Dorothy Sayers rarely did. The language slips occasionally; would Lord Peter really say that London is not someone's "scene"? Jill Paton Walsh also doesn't take the class system of prewar England seriously enough; I doubt if Lord Peter would ask any young actor to call him "Peter" on the strength of a few minutes' acquaintance. Nonetheless, for a fan who has read Dorothy Sayers again and again over the last 30 years, this book is far better than nothing - certainly closer to the real thing than I had imagined anyone getting. And it does have some wonderful things. Best new idea: That Bunter is a high Anglican. Best new character: Mango. Best capturing of the "real voice": The Dowager Duchess. If you are a Dorothy Sayers fan, you should read it. If you are not yet a fan, don't start with this. Try "Whose Body" or "Murder Must Advertise". But get around to this one.

This book is difficult to rate, and a glance at past reviews will tell you why. As a mystery, taken in and of itself, it's pretty good, as long as its readers have the patience to wait for the murder. As a continuation of the Lord Peter Wimsey stories, however, it has a number of problems. Critics who note that Walsh does not capture Sayers' voice are correct, but this is to be expected. You can't really expect one writer to sound exactly like another, and I'm not even convinced that it's a good idea to aim for precise imitation, as it could result in caricature of the original author's style. I won't, therefore, rate the book harshly for failing to "sound like Sayers." Wimsey fans just be aware that it will not be the same as a Sayers novel.

The larger problem is that Walsh fails to capture the characters correctly. The novel is told primarily from the perspective of Harriet, and as a result, Harriet's character emerges much more strongly. Still, I'm not convinced that Walsh's Harriet is really the same person as Sayers' Harriet. For example, Walsh's Harriet is a little more of a feminist, or rather a different kind of feminist, than is Sayers' Harriet. As an advocate of female colleges and a professional writer herself, Sayers' Harriet Vane certainly did not endorse traditional gender roles, but she DID promise to "obey" her husband, and I don't see Walsh's Harriet being willing to do that. In general, Walsh's Harriet is opinionated about some issues that I'm not sure that Sayers' Harriet would care about, while being uncertain in areas that I think Sayers' Harriet would be more confident in. However, all of these problems might be expected to some degree: no two authors are going to construct a character in quite the same way, even if it is supposed to be the "same" character. Walsh is, moreover, hampered by writing in the twenty-first century. She has the perspective of hindsight with regard to WWII, which may or may not be an advantage, but she has the disadvantage of not understanding what it was like to be alive in England in the 1930s. It isn't surprising that when her Harriet speaks, her opinions come across as more like what someone from our era would want a woman in the 1930s to say than like what an actual woman of the 1930s would sound like. This is one of the dangers of historical fiction.

The greater problem is with Lord Peter Wimsey himself. Walsh's construction of Peter simply doesn't work. He seems flat, almost two-dimensional, or he seems like someone else. He never comes off the page as a strong character, and he certainly doesn't come off the page as Lord Peter. I suspect that part of the problem is that Walsh is simply more interested in Harriet as a character than she is in Lord Peter. As a detective novelist, she may also understand Harriet better than she understands Peter. But given that Walsh is trying to write a *Lord Peter Wimsey* mystery, the book simply doesn't work properly. The main detective of a novel needs to be more alive than Walsh's Peter ever is. Frankly, I thought that Laurie King, in the brief cameo appearance she gives Peter in _Letter of Mary_, showed a better understanding of his character than Walsh did in this entire novel.

Having said all that. . . though I was initially disappointed with the style and characterization, as I got further into the novel I did find it enjoyable. I give it three stars, but I would hesitate to recommend it to a Wimsey fan without knowing something about the fan's own attitude towards fanfiction and adaptations. Readers who love Sayers' books for their literary references, their depth, and their style should steer clear of _Thrones, Dominations_. Readers who really love the characters and wonder "what happens next" may, on the other hand, be delighted to see a bit more of them. Readers who primarily love Peter as a character should realize that this is really a Harriet Vane mystery, and decide for themselves whether that's enough. The ideal audience for this book may be mystery lovers who aren't intensely dedicated to the original Wimsey books.

The true measure of any attempt to produce a book "in the style of" a famous author is believeabilty. Thrones, Dominations has none of that. Although this book contains many faint echoes of Dorothy Sayers, it also contains an enormous quantity of Jill Paton Walsh. Walsh makes her heavy-handed touch felt in every element of the book.

The plot, while perhaps resembling a Sayers plot in broad outline, has none of her subtle twists and layered clues. Anyone can read the book and guess the murderer in the first twenty pages, which is especially sad because that is something Sayers talked about, jokingly, in several of her previous novels.

The characters, too, are greatly lacking. Those introduced for the first time in this novel seem one-dimensional; Walsh lacks Sayers' ability to make people come alive. And those that are continued from other novels - and Walsh digs up and drags out virtually *every* character from the previous novels - are shades of themselves. It's like watching Harriet and Peter, plus assorted supporting characters, played by teenagers in a high school play. However, for those truly desperate for a Wimsey fix, this book does serve something of the function of a class reunion - you get to see everyone again, even if they aren't quite like you remembered them.

The style is not nearly as intelligent or quietly elegant as in Busman's Honeymoon, Gaudy Night, or any of the earlier books. Walsh's dialogue, in particular, at times sounds like a parody of Sayers'. Even more unfortunately, Walsh has chosen to make up for several of her lacks - lack of character, dialogue, description, and plot - by introducing a great deal of crystal ball prediction of the future. As we read, we are constantly reminded that this was written by a modern author who did her research; after a while, I found myself suspecting that perhaps she included such repeated, heavy-handed references to events to come to prove that she did her research. Unfortunately, she does not manage to make either the characters or the plot any more intelligent by imbuing them with this totally inappropriate awareness of what is to come.

This is a book to read only if you are a true fan of Sayers. If you love the Wimsey stories, this will be the closest you will ever come to an update on their lives. You will get to attend the Sayers Class Reunion, which has a certain value, and you will be able to comfort yourself with the occasional passage that does ring true to Sayers. Fortunately, since no part of this book is especially memorable, you can read it once for its dubious pleasures and allow it to fade from your mind, leaving only the better memories of Sayers' real works behind.

While it was gratifying to know "what happened next," Ms. Walsh's handling of Ms. Sayers' plot was, at best, a weak outline of what would have, I'm sure, been a powerful insight into Ms. Sayers' views on the substance of love, had Ms. Sayers been able to write it. Compared even to that lighter of her works, Busman's Honeymoon, the pale, almost nonexistant portrayals of the inner character of Lord Peter and of Harriet made it clear that one was reading an outsider's re-telling of someone else's story. The effect was similar to hearing a joke competently told by someone who, nonetheless, is unsure of why it is funny. The prose was, at best, rudimentary and school-girlish making it painfully clear throughout that Ms. Sayers did NOT write the finished version of this book. Local vernacular, so brilliantly employed by her, is totally lacking. The lesser known characters are not fully developed causing their actions to seem mechanical and without that 'humaness' so easily acheived by Ms. Sayers. Had we not already been familiars of the 'regulars', we would have been at a loss to explain their roles entirely. Further, and as a direct blow to Ms. Sayers' reputation, the crime did not occur until nearly half way through the book and then the perpetrator was easily guessed shortly thereafter. The real crime, in my opinion, was the pallid glossing over of Bunter's character and total lack of development of his own love story, making that story, especially to those of us who know and love him, entirely non-believable. All in all, except for the giving of certain bare facts pertaining to the Wimsey/Vane match, thus allowing their affectionate followers to imagine the full story, the book, offered as "the last of the Dorothy Sayers" was, in her own words; a washout.

I approached this book with a good deal of fear and trepidation, being sure in my mind that it would be yet another case of PSS (Pale Sequel Syndrome). However my mood shifted to pure delight in the first scene of the book, where the four main characters in the book -- Lord Peter and his Harriet, a West-end producer and his much younger wife -- are introduced via a conversation between Paul Delegardie (Lord Peter's bon vivant "Uncle Pandarus") and his Parisian luncheon guest.

Delegardie asks his companion to speculate on the two couples. The Frenchman, with assumed expertise in all things having to do with "amour", gives an analysis of the two relationships that is pompous, long-winded and, as Delegardie is delighted to point out, totally inaccurate. This type of scene is vintage Sayers -- pinpoint characterization, witty dialogue, and just a soupcon of British superiority. Ms Paton got it exactly right -- as she has in so many other parts of this wonderful book.

Most of the major characters are back in fine fettle: Peter, Harriet, Parker, the two Duchesses of Denver (the Dowager and Helen) and, of course, Bunter. A number of the supporting players have returned as well, such as Freddie Arbuthnot and Rumm, and the new characters -- Harriet's unusual "ladies' maid" especially -- are worthy additions to the list.

I disagree with several of my fellow readers/reviewers on a couple of points.

First, I don't fault Ms. Paton for the relative lack of light badinage between Lord Peter and Harriet. In Sayers' books, there is a definite progression from piffle to plain speaking that parallels the deepening of their relationship. As Harriet and Peter open to each other, they have less need to hide their strong emotions behind wordplay and epigram.

I also disagree with the readers who find "90's" sentiments in the book. Issues such as the male/female roles in marriage, to have/not to have children, and whether women should work or stay home are all much discussed today, but they were of vital importance to Sayers and her contemporaries as well. In Gaudy Night, Harriet laments the waste of a scholarly mind in a woman who left academe to become a farmer's wife. In Thrones, Dominations, Harriet tells the producer's wife to pursue her own interests instead of sitting around waiting for her husband to come home. Two sides of the same coin. The fact that these sentiments seem so "modern" only points out how little has changed, or as "Domina" Sayers would say (without translation) "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose."

My only quibble with this book is a minor one. Paton does not have Sayers' keen ear for regional dialect, so a couple of her local characters, such as the country housekeeper and her daughter, are pretty flat compared Puffet, Rumm, and others of Sayers' inspired creations.

All in all, Ms. Paton has made a great success of Thrones, Dominations. Dare we hope for an encore?

I've read and reread the Lord Peter stories many times. Strong Poison, Murder Must Advertise, the Nine Tailors, and Gaudy Night are my favorites, and my journals entries from my twenties include quotes from the latter two. Among the many themes contained in Gaudy Night, the pondering of how two independent, sensitive, strong-willed, intelligent people can manage the balance of intimacy and freedom demanded by a marriage worth having.

In the new book, it's wonderful to see how the marriage is working out, wonderful to see what happens to the characters. However, it's a bit too heavy. Even at Sayers' most serious in the earlier stories, there's always a bit of inspired wordplay, an "aha" moment, an epiphany that illuminates the whole and inspires delight. Walsh suffers from trying too hard to get it right, and thus the heaviness. I miss the clever wordplay, the "piffling" that has characterized both Lord Peter and Harriet in the past. I don't think that that is something either would give up in becoming more settled in life. However, Bunter is Bunter, Mango is excellent, the Dowager not quite as rambling in her journal entries, but passable. For addicts, then, this is an admirable and necessary fix, but it is the consolation prize, not the fine Havana with a glass of port.