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Thrones,
Dominations
Dorothy L Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh
Published 5th February 1998 by Hodder & Stoughton Publishers
The background to this novel is as much a mystery as the plot itself.
Dorothy L Sayers, creator of the Lord Peter Wimsey series, was born in
Oxford in 1893, and died in 1957. She began writing Thrones,
Dominations, her thirteenth Lord Peter Wimsey novel, in 1936.
For some reason, possibly pressure of work, this book was set aside and
her career led in other directions - to the writing of religious plays
and to the translation of Dante's Divine Comedy, on which she was working
at her death. No definite reason has been found for the non-completion
of this novel.
When the manuscript of Thrones, Dominations,
forgotten for 60 years, surfaced in a worn brown envelope in the safe of
her agents, David Higham Associates, the trustees of the Sayers estate
asked distinguished novelist Jill Paton Walsh to complete it.
Jill Paton Walsh is the prize-winning author of twenty-two books for children
and three literary novels. Educated at Oxford, she has lived in Cambridge
for eight years. In 1994, her self-published novel, Knowledge
of Angels was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
All Jill Paton Walsh had to go on was a fragment:
A glittering mis-en-scene in London society; the early days of Lord Peter Wimsey's marriage to Harriet Vane; parts for theatrical impressarios and fashionable portrait-painters; the plot worked out to her satisfaction, and noted in a deeply cryptic diagram.
From this she had to determine:
What was the mystery? Who murdered whom? How, when and why? What were the clues? How was the mystery solved?
The result is an accomplished and ingenious novel, worthy of the mistress of the golden age of the crime novel at her very best. Heffers offers you the unique opportunity to find out how Jill Paton Walsh felt about this project and how she approached it.
In the book, Lord Peter Wimsey and his new wife, Harriet Vane, are settling in London and enjoying a bustling social life of dinners and cocktail parties. When murder strikes in Lord Peter's own exalted circle, Detective Inspector Charles Parker, Wimsey's brother-in-law, seeks his help. Harriet also gets drawn into the case which casts am unexpected sidelight on her own life with Peter.
To find out how both mysteries are solved,
read Thrones, Dominations, published on 5th February 1998
ISBN 0340684550
