Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers

[meganbmoore]

Having watched the trial of Harriet Vane, an authoress accused of murdering her former lover, Wimsey has become convinced that the woman is innocent, and is thrilled when the murder trial results in a hung jury, requiring another trial a month later. Wimsey decides to prove Harriet’s innocence and interviews her, proposing marriage as he does so. Harriet rightly thanks him for his assistance, and even more rightly rejects him. Wimsey isn’t deterred from either goal.

Being locked up in jail the whole time, Harriet isn’t given a lot to do in her first appearance besides stand by her beliefs (strange at a glance, but understandable when you think about them) and say “Well, you seem like a perfectly nice and likable man, and I’m very happy you’re trying to save my life, but I barely know you, so would you mind not proposing to me in jail every time we meet? It’s a bit uncomfortable. Especially given that my last relationship was a man testing my worthiness as his wife.” 

Sayers was clearly having fun with this one, dropping hints by characters who would have no idea what they were saying, and talking about writing mysteries and detectives. There were a lot of really obvious similarities between this and Unnatural Death. Both revolve around an ill person dying in a way that initially appears to be from natural causes, both have an obvious killer almost from the start, and both revolve around the technicalities of a will and inheritance laws. The difference, of course, is that the murder in Unnatural Death only sped up the death by a few months, and in the end, things may have been better off if Wimsey had left things alone. Here, that’s reversed, with a nearly airtight case being presented against an innocent person.

Does Wimsey strike anyone else as being close to becoming unhinged in this book? At one point, he specifically mentions people shooting themselves in the head as a form of suicide and then mentions it in the context of ending his own life, then seems to almost realize he was taking the seemingly flippant comment seriously. At another time, his frustration with the case leads him to have an almost concerning thought about violently shattering a mirror. I can’t help but almost wonder if his believing he’s in love with Harriet (at this point, it strikes me more as deep admiration with some romantic inclinations, but not really "love” just yet) is his way of dealing with his problems before they lead to his coming unhinged. 

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Peter has PTSD and is also a bit... over-sensitive? mentally fragile? You see more of this in later books, especially Busman's Honeymoon. I do think his bond with Harriet is based on a very real (albeit one-sided, in this book) sense of them being kindred spirits.

The cover of my copy of Strong Poison depicts arsenic being poured into a raw egg! Way to give the game away!

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

With Harriet, there's a bit of a sense of his seeing someone for the first time who he sees as an equal in terms of intellect and values, though not in a way that undermines the other people in his life, if that makes sense. I think having him have a mental breakdown in the first book made me keep an eye out for other problems. I get the feeling that he looks for mysteries to keep himself stable sometimes.

That...is a very poorly thought out book cover. Though at least it makes sense. Mine has two people at a rickety table in front of a fireplace. I'd say it was meant to be Peter and Harriet, but the room they're in is clearly part of a well-to-do household...

(And since we can't see faces or even upper bodies, I'm not even sure the other person is male...)

[melengro.livejournal.com]

That's not the worst of it. (http://melengro.livejournal.com/133310.html)

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

...

There are so many things wrong with that picture, I wouldn't even know where to begin listing them. Wow. That's just an impressive amount of fail.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

That makes total sense. He clearly cares deeply for most of his family, his friends, Bunter, but he doesn't always have a great deal in common with them, particularly in the area of his more intellectual passions. And while he's obviously had his share of prior love affairs, and has been in love before, he's never found that level of intellectual and spiritual kinship. I'm generally not that crazy about relationships being presented as "love at first sight", since really what that usually boils down to is more a sort of surface attraction, the infatuation or lust or intrigue is real enough but it doesn't have much to do with who the loved object really is. But here, it's clear that it's Harriet's strength of personality, her values and intellect and composure under pressure, that have caught his fancy, not just her looks -- not that Harriet is homely, but the stress of trial and imprisonment are surely not doing her appearance any favors, and compared to some of the glamorous singers and actresses Peter has dallied with, Harriet at her best is just average-looking.

I'd agree that there's an element of stability-seeking in Peter's detecting -- it keeps him busy and keeps his mind occupied with puzzles instead of turning in on itself. I don't think that's all there is to it, though -- there's a very strong hobbyist feeling about it to me as well, some of the appeal is simply the intellectual challenge of it all. He's got the slightly obsessive mindset of the hobbyist/collector type -- you see that in his passion for rare old books, for fine wines and vintage ports -- and a bit of a competitive streak, as seen in his cricket-playing days in particular. While he's got enough money that he could while away his days in luxurious idleness, I think he'd be bored stiff doing so -- he delights in challenges and using his wits, and even without the shellshock I think he'd be just restless and bored with nothing to do but drift through life, and the PTSD and mental/emotional fragility just add to the reasons why it's good for him to keep busy with such a consuming hobby. The downside, of course, is when as you've seen here or in Unnatural Death, and again in later books, he gets a little too close to the cases -- he agonizes when his interference leads to someone's death, even if it's a guilty murderer facing a societally-approved punishment; or here in Strong Poison, he's growing frantic at the thought that all his best efforts and brainpower might not be enough to save an innocent woman from being wrongfully condemned. But when you see him involved in mysteries that aren't such life-or-death matters -- like some of the short stories where he's catching thieves or working out the truth behind complicated practical jokes or figuring out a brain-teaser of a will -- in those settings, he really seems to be having an immense amount of fun. He likes the puzzle-solving, and I think sometimes gets so fixated on it that he starts to lose sight that the people involved are people rather than chess-pieces.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I kind of think his interactions with Mary are a more obvious representation of how most of his relationships probably seem from his eyes. While there's the added "this is my sister...how could anyone be attracted to her or want to spend his life with her?" element, it's pretty clear that, while he adores her in his way, he can't think of anything to talk to her about that would take up more than 5 minutes. The only conversations he seems to have that scratch beneath the surface or take up any chunks of time are related to investigations, with the possible exception of trying to help Parker and Mary work out their romantic problems. OTOH, even though she didn't get to do much here, Harriet is pretty clearly someone he could talk to for hours. I'm not really sold on Peter really being in love with her at this point-more smitten-but the common ground a good relationship can be built on is pretty clearly there.

I think the marvelous Dowager described Harriet along the lines of being attractive, but not pretty or beautiful by the normal standards of society.