Eric Sandberg - Dorothy L. Sayers: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction

Dorothy L. Sayers (18931957) was a key practitioner and leading theorist of detective fiction in her time. She is remembered today along with several other writers of Golden Age detective fiction, including Agatha Christie (18901976), Ngaio Marsh (18951982), Josephine Tey (18961952), Gladys Mitchell (190183), and Margery Allingham (190466), and is frequently referred to as one of the so-called queens of crime who now dominate our cultural memory of the genre and the era (Kaplan 144). To these women writers can be added the names of notable male writers of detective novels (whose reputations have, by and large, not fared as well over the past century as their female competitors and collaborators) such as R. Austin Freeman (18621943), G.K. Chesterton (18741936), Freeman Wills Crofts (18791957), Anthony Berkeley Cox (18931971), and Nicholas Blake (aka Cecil Day-Lewis, 190472). Sayers was considerably less prolific than many of her colleagues: Christie published more than 75 detective novels and collections of stories over the course of her career; Marsh wrote 32 novels featuring Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn; Allingham produced more than 20 novels and collections in the Albert Campion series. Sayerss record of 12 detective novels and three short story collections seem positively restrained in comparison.

Yet Sayerss workparticularly the 11 novels in which her aristocratic detective-hero Lord Peter Wimsey appearsare touchstones of Golden Age detective fiction. She was an exceedingly creative and ingenious creator of whodunnits, crafting mysteries that offer the mental challenge dependent on quick wits, an analytical mind, and the making of connections so central to the classic detective form (Messent 29). She also worked very effectively in the howdunnit tradition, proficient in devising unusual, improbable, and mystifying methods of murder. At times, she integrates elements of the whydunnit, not necessarily asking the psychological questions expected by a contemporary reader of crime fiction, but postulating a rational yet unknown motive for murder that is a central part of the puzzleand, most often, she intertwines all these patterns in the same novel. She also has demonstrated mastery over the timetable mystery and is something of a virtuoso of the red herring that misleads detective and reader alike. She wrote an exceptionally clever locked-room mysteryset, fantastically enough, on an open beachand was incredibly deft at intertwining two seemingly unrelated mystery plots into one powerful strand and at grafting a second mystery onto one that has apparently been solved.

All of this is impressive and would be enough to make Sayers one of the most successful and important Golden Age writers. But her novels also were, as Carolyn G. Heilbrun has pointed out, the epitome detective novel of mannersthat is to say, historical manifestations of a real time and the real social conditions that then prevailed (Detective 280). Her work is written, Heilbrun notes, with the conviction and confidence that arises from a mastery of their time and place (280). Even more important, her work also offers a classic exampleit is no exaggeration to say the best interwar exampleof the way the detective genre can exceed its ostensible limitations by integrating complex characterization, powerful human relationships, and important social material with its mystery plotting. Add to this Sayerss sheer ability to write, and what results is a powerful literary package.

Yet many notable critics have disagreed with this assessment. To list a few of the more prominent attacks on her reputation: Q.D. Leavis deplores the odd conviction that Sayers belongs to a different class than the likes of Edgar Wallace (335), Edmund Wilson describes her writing as lacking any distinction at all (60), and George Orwell does not share the opinion that Gaudy Night puts Miss Sayers definitely among the great writers (185). It might be hoped that these condemnations would have been reduced by the judgment of posterity to no more than literary-critical curiosities. But more recent critics also are unimpressed by her work: A.N. Wilson, one of her harshest critics, writes of her novels that there seems absolutely no point in making a catalogue of their faults (Complete), whereas John Lanchester claims, there is something monstrous about her writing; its the kind of style which has a built-in falsity to it (3). Sayers is undeniably a polarizing figure, certainly the most divisive of the main Golden Age writersand this should be seen as one of her strengths. Christie offers readers many pleasures, but she upsets no one, and it is equally hard to imagine a critical furor raging over the work of many of Sayers other peers. There can be little doubt that, love her or hate her, Sayers is one of the central figures not just of the detective fiction of her own interwar era but also of the history of crime fiction as a whole.