Dorothy L. Sayers. Strong Poison. 1930. Narrated by Ian Carmichael, BBC Audio, 1989.

Strong Poison introduces us to Dorothy Sayers’ sleuthing duo of Sir Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, just as The Secret Adversary introduced us to Tommy and Tuppence, the Agatha Christie detectives. The similarity pretty much ends there.

Harriet Vane has been arrested for murdering her lover and potential fiancé, Philip Boyes. Everything points to her. They had been living together for some time, and then they broke up. There are witnesses noting that she was mad at him. The most serious piece of evidence, though, is that Mr. Boyes was poisoned by arsenic, and Miss Vane had purchased quantities of arsenic and other poisons in the past half year or so.

As has been pointed out by many, some versions of the Medieval ballad “Lord Randal” tell us specifically that the lord’s betrothed poisoned him with “strong poison.” (See version 12H on the linked page, stanza 2).

Miss Vane is a novelist, and she claims that she purchased the poisons because she was working on a murder mystery and wanted to see for herself how easy or difficult it was to purchase regulated poisons. (It is no spoiler to say that it was pretty easy for her.)

Now Dorothy Sayers had written a few other novels featuring Lord Peter, but this was the first with Harriet Vane. So this is a unique way to introduce the person who would become Lord Peter’s partner and eventually his wife. He sits in on her trial as he has done on other trials to observe things for his own detective work. He becomes smitten with Miss Vane; hence, he cannot believe she is guilty.

He visits her in prison and explains that he might be able to help her. After about the third meeting together he asks her to marry him. Considering that she was “living in sin” with Boyes, she is not interested in someone she hardly knows.

This becomes a case of “follow the money.” Yes, Boyes had named Harriet in his will, but he did not have a whole lot money. The focus goes to the famous retired actress known by her stage name Cremorna Garden. She is the great aunt of both Boyes and his solicitor Norman Urquart. She is now in her nineties and senile. Could her wealth be the reason someone wanted Boyes out of the way?

Winsey has a challenge. It does take time for him to figure out a plan and execute it. He does have some talented people he can employ including Miss Climpson, an agent in her own right, and Miss Murchison, the impeccably honest employee of Mr. Urquart. Wimsey has a few connections, too, including a friend on the police force and a few businessmen.

Strong Poison is not so much about finding clues and solving a mystery that way—though a certain typewriter and a draft of a will do figure into the story. Instead, we observe the plot that Lord Peter has hatched to find the clues and discover the guilty party. How he does it is fascinating. Miss Climpson’s parody of a spiritualist meeting is a hoot, but it helps her gather some evidence.

One note on the style: While this is primarily a plot driven story, it is mostly told through dialogue. It is easy to imagine reading this as a play rather than a prose novel. If there is a weakness, it is that the story begins with a long judge’s summary before as jury. We do not hear the trial except for what the judge and others say about it. The trial ends in a hung jury, which means Miss Vane must be tried again. Still, some Shakespeare plays, e.g. The Comedy of Errors or Othello, begin largely by someone explaining the backstory. Like those Shakespeare plays, get through that introduction for the background, and soon the action begins!

We listened to the above BBC compact disc. The actor who played Lord Peter in a 1963 BBC radio series of Sayers mysteries is the reader on the CD. He does a fine job voicing each character in a distinctive manner. North Americans might have a tough time understanding the accents of a few of the characters, but the main ideas come through pretty well.