Clouds of Witness - Softcover

Sayers, Dorothy L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1494869810 ISBN 13: 9781494869816

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014

Synopsis

This delightful mystery is the second featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. When his brother, the Duke of Denver, is accused of murder then it is Lord Peter’s job to clear his name. The Duke is found standing over the body of his sister’s fiancé, who he has recently argued with about claims that the victim, Captain Denis Cathcart, was a card sharp. However, when questioned, he refuses to give a reasonable account of why he was wandering around outside, in the middle of the night. Why is he being so secretive and what is their sister, Mary, hiding? This is a wonderful, Golden Age mystery, with Lord Peter Wimsey and Charles Parker truly collaborating. There are some great, atmospheric scenes, most notably when Wimsey and Bunter are lost on the moors. The scenes in the House of Lords, where the Duke of Denver is tried, are also very interesting. Much of the fun in these books is in Wimsey himself and his light-hearted banter and eccentric behaviour. He is one of the greatest fictional amateur detectives and this is one of his best cases.

About this title

About the Author:

Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893 –1957) was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages. She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between World War I and World War II that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. However, Sayers herself considered her translation of Dante's Divina Commedia to be her best work. She is also known for her plays and essays. Sayers's most notable religious book is probably The Mind of the Maker which explores at length the analogy between a human Creator (especially a writer of novels and plays) and the doctrine of The Trinity in creation. She suggests that any human creation of significance involves the Idea, the Energy (roughly: the process of writing and that actual 'incarnation' as a material object) and the Power and that this "trinity" has useful analogies with the theological Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In addition to the ingenious thinking in working out this analogy, the book contains striking examples drawn from her own experiences as a writer and elegant criticisms of writers when the balance between Idea, Energy and Power is not, in her view, adequate. She defends strongly the view that literary creatures have a nature of their own, vehemently replying to a well-wisher who wanted Lord Peter to "end up a convinced Christian". "From what I know of him, nothing is more unlikely... Peter is not the Ideal Man". Her very influential essay The Lost Tools of Learning has been used by many schools in the US as a basis for the classical education movement, reviving the medieval trivium subjects (grammar, logic and rhetoric) as tools to enable the analysis and mastery of every other subject. Sayers also wrote three volumes of commentaries about Dante, religious essays, and several plays, of which The Man Born to be King may be the best known. Her religious works did so well at presenting the orthodox Anglican position that, in 1943, the Archbishop of Canterbury offered her a Lambeth doctorate in divinity, which she declined. In 1950, however, she accepted an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of Durham. Although she never describes herself as such, her economic and political ideas, rooted as they are in the classical Christian doctrines of Creation and Incarnation, are very close to the Chesterton-Belloc theory of Distributism.

From AudioFile:

This delightful production is a perfect introduction to theworld of Lord Peter Wimsey, one of the world's foremost fictionaldetectives. Listeners, who may be familiar with Carmichael's smoothportrayal of Lord Peter from PBS's "Mystery," will equally enjoy hisadept and vivid characterizations of the other characters, includingBunter, Inspector Parker, and Sir Impy Biggs. Lord Peter returns froma vacation to investigate a murder on his own doorstep: His brother,the Duke of Denver, has been arrested for the murder of his sisterMary's fiancé. The unabridged presentation does justice to amultilayered, complex story line and will give listeners a chance tobe reintroduced to one of the earliest appearances of this elegant,classic character. E.J.F. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1494869810
• ISBN 13: 9781494869816
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 170