Gaudy Night: A Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery with Harriet Vane

“Gaudy Night stands out even among Miss Sayers’s novels. And Miss Sayers has long stood in a class by herself.”—Times Literary Supplement (London)

Dorothy L. Sayers’s Gaudy Night takes mystery writer Harriet Vane to Oxford University, Harriet’s alma mater, for a reunion, only to find herself the target of a nightmare of harassment and mysterious, murderous threats. Now available as a limited Olive Edition from Harper Perennial.

When Harriet attends her Oxford reunion, known as the Gaudy, the prim academic setting is haunted by a rash of bizarre pranks: scrawled obscenities, burnt effigies, and poison-pen letters, including one that says, "Ask your boyfriend with the title if he likes arsenic in his soup." Some of the notes threaten murder; all are perfectly ghastly; yet in spite of their scurrilous nature, all are perfectly worded. And Harriet finds herself ensnared in a nightmare of romance and terror, with only the tiniest shreds of clues to challenge her powers of detection, and those of her paramour, the dashing private investigator Lord Peter Wimsey.

“Gaudy Night stands out even among Miss Sayers’s novels. And Miss Sayers has long stood in a class by herself.” - Times Literary Supplement (London)

“Very skillfull writing. Miss Sayers has done a real tour de force, and done it with ease and grace.” - Saturday Review

“A royal performance.” - The Spectator

“So excitingly good in its field, so brilliantly planned and so excellently written, that even the weariest able minds and the jumpiest nerves should react pleasingly to it.” - New York Times

“[Sayers] brought to the detective novel originality, intelligence, energy and wit.” - P.D. James

“One of the greatest mystery story writers of this century.” - Los Angeles Times

“Dorothy Sayers is in a class by herself.” - Chicago Tribune