Gaudy Night ( 1935 ) is a mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the tenth in her popular series about aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, and the third featuring crime writer Harriet Vane.

Harriet is forced to re-examine her relationship with Wimsey in the light of what she has discovered about herself.

The perpetrator is finally unmasked by Wimsey as one of the college servants, revealed to be the widow of a disgraced academic at a northern university.

Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is a fictional character in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers, in which he solves mysteries ; usually, but not always, murders.

A bon vivant who solves mysteries for his own amusement, Wimsey is an archetype for the British gentleman detective.

Born in 1890 and aging in real time, Wimsey is described as being at best average height, with straw-coloured hair, a beaked nose, and a vaguely foolish face.

Nevertheless, he is a friend as well as a servant, and Wimsey again and again expresses amazement at Bunter's high efficiency and competence in virtually every sphere of life.

However, Wimsey is not entirely well.

It is not exactly known when Wimsey recruited Miss Climpson to run an undercover employment agency for women, a means to garner information from the otherwise inaccessible world of spinsters and widows, but it is prior to Unnatural Death ( 1927 ), in which Miss Climpson assists Wimsey's investigation of the suspicious death of an elderly cancer patient.

She has known Wimsey for years and is attracted to him, though it is not explicitly stated whether they were lovers.

In " Strong Poison ", she is the first person other than Wimsey himself to realize that he has fallen in love with Harriet.

Wimsey saves her from the gallows, but she believes that gratitude is not a good foundation for marriage, and politely but firmly declines his frequent proposals.

Wimsey is at her hotel the next morning.

" Roger " is an ancestral Wimsey name.

In the final Wimsey story, the 1942 short story " Talboys ", Peter and Harriet are enjoying rural domestic bliss with their three sons when Bredon, their first-born, is accused of the theft of prize peaches from the neighbour's tree.

In one of the Wimsey Papers, a series of fictionalised commentaries in the form of mock letters between members of the Wimsey family published in the Spectator, there is a reference to Harriet's difficulty in continuing to write murder mysteries at a time when European dictators were openly committing mass murders with impunity ; this seems to have reflected Sayers ' own wartime feeling.

" There is, however, no verifiable evidence of any such World War I lover of Sayers on whom the character of Wimsey might be based.

Another theory is that Wimsey was based, at least in part, on Eric Whelpton, who was a close friend of Sayers at Oxford.

" it is seen that when Wimsey is caught by a severe recurrence of his WWI shell-shock and nightmares, being taken care of by Bunter, the two of them revert to being " Major Wimsey " and " Sergeant Bunter ".

Wimsey discovers that Freke murdered Sir Reuben and staged his ' disappearance ' from home, having borne a grudge for years over Lady Levy, who chose to marry Sir Reuben rather than him.

Some editions include as a foreword a letter written by Sayers " To my friend Joe Dignam, the kindliest of landlords ," from which it becomes evident that she herself was in the habit of having holidays in Galloway-a habit attributed to Wimsey in the book-and that on one of them she promised her landlord to write a detective novel set in this area, of which the book was a fulfilment.

There is only a closed circle of suspects to deal with, and Wimsey has no emotional involvement, although, having alerted the Police to Campbell's murder, he subsequently reflects that Campbell was a man anyone might feel justified in killing, and that the six suspects are all generally decent people.

* Miss Harriet Vane-protagonist, a novelist with whom Wimsey is in love, having saved her from the gallows

Wimsey speculates that Will may not have wanted to live, having guessed his part in killing Deacon.

His deep remorse and guilt at having caused Crutchley to be executed leave doubt as to whether he would undertake further murder investigations-and in fact Sayers wrote no further Wimsey novels after this one.

The 1942 short story " Talboys ", the very last Wimsey fiction produced by Sayers, is both a sequel to the present book, in having the same location and some of the same village characters, and an antithesis in being lighthearted and having no crime worse the theft of some peaches from a neighbour's garden.

Sayers admitted having partially based Bunter's character on P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves, although Wimsey and Bunter are quite distinct from Wooster and Jeeves.

For reasons never clarified in any of the books, after the end of his mission as a spy behind enemy lines Wimsey in the later part of the war moved from Intelligence and resumed the role of a regular line officer.

Throughout the books, Bunter always takes care to address Wimsey as " My Lord ".

Other recurring characters include Inspector Parker, solicitor Murbles, barrister Sir Impey Biggs, newshound Salcombe Hardy, and financial whiz the Honourable Freddy Arbuthnot, who finds himself entangled in the case in the first of the Wimsey books, 1923's Whose Body ?.

Though Sayers lived until 1957, she never again took up the Wimsey books after this final effort.

Thus, Peter Wimsey remained forever fixed on the background of inter-war England, and the books are nowadays often read for their evocation of that period as much as for the intrinsic detective mysteries.

Ian Carmichael, who played the part of Wimsey in the BBC Television series adaptation and studied the character and the books thoroughly, said that the character was Sayers ' conception of the ' ideal man ', based in part on her earlier romantic misfortunes.

Many episodes in the Wimsey books express a mild satire of the British class system, in particular in depicting the relationship between Wimsey and Bunter, the two of them clearly being the best and closest of friends, yet Bunter invariably punctilious in using " my lord " even when they are alone, and " his lordship " in company.

* Extensive review of the Wimsey books in " Second Glance: Dorothy Sayers and the Last Golden Age " by Joanna Scutts

* Duke of Denver, the fictional English title of nobility in the Lord Peter Wimsey books by Dorothy Sayers

* Dorothy L. Sayers, author of the Lord Peter Wimsey books and translator of Dante's Divina Commedia.

( In the books, Wimsey did not join the Army until after the outbreak of the War.

Within a few weeks Wimsey was buried in a dug-out by shell fire, and Bunter was among those who rescued him.

Wimsey assumes the two men did recover the emeralds and Cranton then killed Cobbleigh for them, but cannot prove it.

It is only when Wimsey returns to Fenchurch the following Christmas that he understands.

After an engagement of some months following the events at the end of Gaudy Night, Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane marry.

Sayers had charted the developing relationship between Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane over four published novels, culminating in Busman's Honeymoon, the action of which takes place immediately following the couple's marriage.