An irresistible novel from a master of crime fiction

Dorothy L. Sayers’ Strong Poison, first published in 1930, has been called “the novel highest among the masterpieces” of crime fiction, with “the strongest possible element of suspense.”

It is the fifth novel that features Sayers’ irrepressible nobleman detective Lord Peter Wimsey.

The scene begins in a courtroom, where the judge sums up the arguments against Harriet Vane, a crime novelist accused of poisoning her ex-lover, Peter Boyes. Vane turns out to have bought arsenic at drugstores near her, supposedly to research a novel that she is writing.

Lord Peter, watching the trial, is convinced that Harriet Vane is not the real killer. The jury trying her is hung, giving him time to investigate the murder while Harriet waits in prison for a retrial.

Lord Peter’s investigations take him to Boyes’ cousin, the solicitor Norman Urquhart, with whom Boyes had been living. Boyes had had dinner at Urquhart’s house before meeting with Harriet, from whom he had been estranged. Arriving home from his visit to Harriet, Boyes became violently ill and died the next day.

All the evidence points to Harriet Vane, yet Lord Peter is sure she is innocent. His journey takes him to places such as a bohemian party “packed to suffocation with people” and a sordid neighborhood in London to see Blindfold Bill, an expert lock picker turned evangelist. He sends his secretary, Miss Climpson, to visit Mrs. Wrayburn, an elderly and senile former actress who is great-aunt to Boyes and Urquhart and very rich. Miss Climpson discovers a crucial clue in a spiritualistic séance with Mrs. Wrayburn’s nurse.

Although it is a classic crime novel, Strong Poison has held up for nearly a century not only for its shrewd and intricate plotting but for its vivid portraiture of English society at all levels, from a ducal manor to the slums. Sayers’ agile wit shows through in all her characters.

Readers seeking a first-rate crime novel will be surprised and delighted at Sayers’ achievement, which is as irresistibly enjoyable today as when it was first published.