 First edition | |
| Author | Dorothy L. Sayers |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Lord Peter Wimsey |
| Genre | Mystery novel |
| Publisher | Gollancz [1] |
Publication date | 1930 [1] |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 288 [1] |
| Preceded by | The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club |
| Followed by | The Five Red Herrings |
Strong Poison is a 1930 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her fifth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and the first in which Harriet Vane appears.
The novel opens with mystery author Harriet Vane on trial for the murder of her former lover, Phillip Boyes: a writer with strong views on atheism, anarchy, and free love. Publicly professing to disapprove of marriage, he had persuaded a reluctant Harriet to live with him, only to renounce his principles a year later and to propose. Harriet, outraged at being deceived, had broken off the relationship.
Following the separation, the former couple had met occasionally, and the evidence at trial pointed to Boyes suffering from repeated bouts of gastric illness at around the time that Harriet was buying poisons under assumed names, to demonstrate – so she said – a plot point of her novel then in progress.
Returning from a holiday in North Wales in better health, Boyes had dined with his cousin, the solicitor Norman Urquhart, before going to Harriet's flat to discuss reconciliation, where he had accepted a cup of coffee. That night he was taken fatally ill, apparently with gastritis. Foul play was eventually suspected, and a post-mortem revealed that Boyes had died from acute arsenic poisoning. Apart from Harriet's coffee and the evening meal with his cousin in which every item had been shared by two or more people, the victim appeared to have taken nothing else that evening.
The trial results in a hung jury. As a unanimous verdict is required, the judge orders a re-trial. Lord Peter Wimsey visits Harriet in prison, declares his conviction of her innocence and promises to catch the real murderer. Wimsey also announces that he wishes to marry her, a suggestion that Harriet politely but firmly declines.
Working against time before the new trial, Wimsey first explores the possibility that Boyes killed himself. Wimsey's friend, Detective Inspector Charles Parker, disproves that theory.
The rich great-aunt of the cousins Urquhart and Boyes, Rosanna Wrayburn, is now quite old and close to death. Urquhart is acting as her family solicitor. He tells Wimsey that when she dies most of her fortune will pass to him, with nothing at all going to Boyes. Wimsey suspects that to be a lie, and sends his enquiry agent Miss Climpson to get hold of Rosanna's original will, which she does in a comic scene exposing the practices of fraudulent mediums. The will in fact names Boyes as principal beneficiary.
Wimsey plants a spy, Miss Joan Murchison, in Urquhart's office where she finds a hidden packet of arsenic. She also discovers that Urquhart had abused his position as Rosanna's solicitor, embezzled her investments, then lost the money on the stock market. Urquhart recognised that he would face inevitable exposure should Rosanna die and Boyes claim his inheritance. However, Boyes was unaware of the will's contents and Urquhart reasoned that if Boyes were to die first, nobody could challenge him as sole remaining beneficiary, and his fraud would not be revealed.
After perusing A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad , in which the poet likens the reading of serious poetry to King Mithridates' self-immunization against poisons, Wimsey suddenly understands what had happened. Urquhart had administered the arsenic in an omelette which Boyes himself had cooked. Although Boyes and Urquhart had shared the dish, the latter had been unaffected as he had carefully built up his own immunity beforehand by taking small doses of the poison over a long period. Wimsey tricks Urquhart into a confession before witnesses.
At Harriet's retrial, the prosecution presents no case and she is freed. Exhausted by her ordeal, she again rejects Wimsey's proposal of marriage. Wimsey persuades Parker to propose to his sister, Lady Mary, whom he has long admired. Freddy Arbuthnot, Wimsey's friend and stock market contact, marries Rachel Levy, the daughter of the murder victim in Whose Body?
The novel's title appears in some variants of the Anglo-Scottish border ballad Lord Rendal whose title character was poisoned by his lover:
"What did you have for your breakfast, my own pretty boy?
What did you have for your breakfast, my comfort and joy?"
"A cup of strong poison; mother, make my bed soon,
There's a pain in my heart, and I mean to lie down." [2]
In their review of crime novels (1989 edition), the US writers Barzun and Taylor called the novel "highest among the masterpieces. It has the strongest possible element of suspense – curiosity and the feeling one shares with Wimsey for Harriet Vane. The clues, the enigma, the free-love question, and the order of telling could not be improved upon. As for the somber opening, with the judge's comments on how to make an omelet, it is sheer genius." [3]
The effect of arsenic as described in the novel was accepted by the science of the time, but it is now believed that long-term consumption would in fact have caused many health problems. [4]
The novel was adapted for a BBC television series in 1987 starring Edward Petherbridge as Lord Peter and Harriet Walter as Harriet Vane. [5]
It has been adapted for radio three times:
| Broadcast | Lord Peter | Harriet Vane | Charles Parker | Adaption |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Sep 1963 | Frank Duncan | Mary Wimbush | Timothy West | Felix Felton |
| 17 May 1976 | Ian Carmichael | Ann Bell | Gabriel Woolf | Chris Miller |
| 2 Oct 1999 | Simon Russell Beale | Emma Fielding | Nicholas Farrell | Michael Bakewell |
While Sayers was working on her first novel, Whose Body? , she began a relationship with John Cournos, a writer of Russian-Jewish background. [6] Cournos was an advocate of free love: he did not believe in marriage and did not want children. [7] Cournos pressed Sayers to have sex with contraception, but she, a High Anglican, resisted to avoid what she called "the taint of the rubber shop". [6] Their relationship foundered on the mismatch of expectations, [6] and within two years Cournos – apparently not believing in the ideas he had professed – had married somebody else. [7] Both Sayers and Cournos later wrote fictionalised versions of their relationship: Sayers in Strong Poison (1930) and Cournos in The Devil Is an English Gentleman (1932). [6] [7]
Gaudy Night (1935) is a mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the tenth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, and the third including Harriet Vane.
Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is the fictional protagonist in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers. A dilettante who solves mysteries for his own amusement, Wimsey is an archetype for the British gentleman detective. He is often assisted by his valet and former batman, Mervyn Bunter; by his good friend and later brother-in-law, police detective Charles Parker; and, in a few books, by Harriet Vane, who becomes his wife.
Murder Must Advertise is a 1933 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the eighth in her series featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. Most of the action of the novel takes place in an advertising agency, a setting with which Sayers was familiar as she had herself worked as an advertising copywriter until 1931.
Unnatural Death is a 1927 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her third featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. It was published under the title The Dawson Pedigree in the United States in 1928.
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club is a 1928 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her fourth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. Much of the novel is set in the Bellona Club, a fictional London club for war veterans.
Have His Carcase is a 1932 locked-room mystery by Dorothy L. Sayers, her seventh novel featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and the second in which Harriet Vane appears. It is also included in the 1987 BBC TV series. The book marks a stage in the long drawn out courting of Harriet Vane by Wimsey. Though working closely with him on solving the book's mystery, she still refuses to marry him.
Busman's Honeymoon is a 1937 novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her eleventh and last featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, and her fourth and last to feature Harriet Vane.
Thrones, Dominations is a Lord Peter Wimsey–Harriet Vane murder mystery novel that Dorothy L. Sayers began writing but abandoned, and which remained at her death as fragments and notes. It was completed by Jill Paton Walsh and published in 1998. The title is a quotation from John Milton's Paradise Lost and refers to two categories of angel in the Christian angelic hierarchy.
Harriet Deborah Vane, later Lady Peter Wimsey, is a fictional character in the works of British writer Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) and the sequels by Jill Paton Walsh.
A Presumption of Death is a 2002 Lord Peter Wimsey–Harriet Vane mystery novel by Jill Paton Walsh, based loosely on The Wimsey Papers by Dorothy L. Sayers. The novel is Walsh's first original Lord Peter Wimsey novel, following Thrones, Dominations, which Sayers left as an unfinished manuscript, and was completed by Walsh. A Presumption of Death is written by Walsh, except for excerpts from The Wimsey Papers.
John Cournos, born Ivan Grigorievich Korshun, was an American writer and translator.
Mervyn Bunter is a fictional character in Dorothy L. Sayers's novels and short stories. He serves as Lord Peter Wimsey's valet, and served as Wimsey's batman during the First World War. Bunter was partially based on the fictional butler Jeeves, created by P. G. Wodehouse.
Sergeant/Inspector/Chief Inspector Charles Parker is a fictional police detective who appears in several Lord Peter Wimsey stories by Dorothy L. Sayers, and later becomes Lord Peter's brother-in-law.
The gentleman detective, less commonly lady detective, is a type of fictional character. He has long been a staple of crime fiction, particularly in detective novels and short stories set in the United Kingdom in the Golden Age. The heroes of these adventures are typically both gentlemen by conduct and often also members of the British gentry. The literary heroes being in opposition to professional police force detectives from the working classes.
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was an English crime novelist, playwright, translator and critic.
The Late Scholar is the fourth and final Lord Peter Wimsey-Harriet Vane detective novel written by Jill Paton Walsh. Featuring characters created by Dorothy L. Sayers, it was written with the co-operation and approval of Sayers' estate. It was published by Hodder & Stoughton on 5 December 2013 in the UK, and on 14 January 2014 in North America.
A Dorothy L. Sayers Mystery is a series of television adaptations of three Lord Peter Wimsey novels—Strong Poison, Have his Carcase and Gaudy Night—by Dorothy L. Sayers.
Miss Katharine Alexandra Climpson is a minor character in the Lord Peter Wimsey stories by Dorothy L. Sayers. She appears in two novels: Unnatural Death (1927) and Strong Poison (1930), and is mentioned in Gaudy Night (1935) and Busman's Honeymoon (1937).
Lord Peter Wimsey is a series of full cast BBC Radio drama adaptations of Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between 1973 and 1983, with a further adaptation of Gaudy Night mounted for BBC Audiobooks in 2005 to complete the full sequence of Sayers' novels, all starring Ian Carmichael in the title role.
Lord Peter Wimsey is a series of television serial adaptations of five Lord Peter Wimsey novels by Dorothy L. Sayers starring Ian Carmichael broadcast on BBC One between 1972 and 1975, beginning with Clouds of Witness in April 1972.