Busman's Honeymoon is the crowning glory of the works of Ms. Sayers in this series. It really ought to be read last, or at least after Strong Poison, Have His Carcasse, and Gaudy Night. It's a love story, you see, with detective interludes, which is how the author described it. And WHAT A LOVE STORY! I told someone just the other day that this book ought to be required reading at pre-marital counseling sessions. He, Lord Peter Wimsey, aristocratic sleuth, understands her, Harriet Vane, writer of detective novels, his “heart’s heart,” so very well, and it makes for delicious reading and consideration on the subject of courtship and the intertwining of two hearts and minds. She understands him at last, as soon as he can help her put her own heart back together. When they meet, in Strong Poison, she is just about to be convicted of murder, and both her nerves and her love have been rubbed raw by the hemp of the waiting rope, the grotesque finale of the horrid affair that landed her in the dock.
Lord Peter has done in those three aforementioned books what few men could do for any woman; he has made her see that she can be loved. Loved. Wanted, yes, but not wanted more than enjoyed and respected. Loved for herself, loved with an expectation of fun and delight and the ability to return love. A very tall order for most couples, especially when all first advances had to take place under the watchful eye of a prison warden.
For these two, all advances in romance had to come with knotty problems to unravel, but, between Lord Peter and the woman who has him “singing songs in the French language”, the knottiest are those of the heart. Harriet has come to trust that somehow, wonderfully, her return of love will be enough for this man, and she knows that to return his love will be enough for her. It's a gem, I tell you, the unfolding of this story … and before it closes, as they move into their "fixer-upper" in the country, they must needs discover a body in the cellar. His startling ability to detect is memorably portrayed with the most provocative literary revelation of what it would be like to "detect things," when those you've caught are now themselves about to leave this world at the end of a rope.
I'm sure it's out there somewhere, what I'm about to say, though I haven't read it. It's rather as if all of Harriet's ragged vulnerability in Strong Poison and Gaudy Night, all that she faced and all that she was powerless to forestall, looking death in the face moment by moment and growing too weary to care very much about it, all that now plays out in Lord Peter's soul, his ebullient, joyous, lover's soul. Will he, that they may know a more easeful life, walk away from what he does best and does for the sake of truth and justice? No more preoccupation with alibis and time-tables and motives, and no one on death row because he's so good at what he does.
Dear reader, this book is, to me, a great detective story, and for a bonus, perhaps the best look at how two people can possess one another completely with absolutely no triumph of ownership. One of my very favorites.
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From #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover comes a novel that explores life after tragedy and the enduring spirit of love. | Learn more
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Top reviews from other countries
M Clark
A personal favorite of the Lord Peter Wimsey series
Reviewed in Germany on October 17, 2023Flello R.
a love story within a detective novel
Reviewed in France on September 10, 2019
