Book Review - Busman's Honeymoon

Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Since I started my current Sayers odyssey with Lord Peter, a collection of short stories that ends with a story that has Lord Peter and Harriet ensconced at Talboys with their children, I didn't find reading this book before I read the Vane trilogy (Strong Poison / Have His Carcase / Gaudy Night to be too egregious. Maybe when I finally get to the trilogy, I should read it backwards.

It's not even a mystery, really. In an acknowledgement forward, Sayers herself calls it a sentimental comedy. "It has been said, by myself and others, that a love-interest is only an intrusion upon a detective story. But to the characters involved, the detective-interest might well seem an irritating intrusion upon their love story. If there is but a ha'porth of detection to an intolerable deal of saccharine, let the occasion be the excuse."

And so the body isn't found until one-third of the pages have been read.

Sayers occupies herself instead with the problem of how Peter and Harriet and Bunter are going to be now that their lives, and their roles, have changed. Now that Peter is a husband and Harriet has a husband ("a repressive word, that, when you came to think of it, compounded with a grumble and a thump") and Bunter has a m'lady.

The three are as unpredictable as ever (one character tries to "...assess the financial relationship between Peter's title, his ancient and shabby blazer, his manservant and his wife's non-committal tweeds...") and plopping them down the English countryside to deal with a cast of colorful characters is fun reading.

It's supposed to be a honeymoon, but the house isn't ready, there's no food and, oops, there's a dead body in the cellar. The stock characters that seem to always populate English villages circulate through Talboys' tackily-furnished sitting room, telling their stories, imposing their will, and, periodically, crying ("Harriet, who was as a rule good at handkerchiefs, discovered to her annoyance that on this particular morning she had provided herself only with an elegant square of linen, suitable for receiving such rare and joyful drops as might be expected on one's honeymoon.")

Sayers is, as I've come to expect, up to her usual tricks, quoting, often without citation, Shakespeare, Donne, Keats, and more. There are also long passages written in French. One wonders what else one is missing because one doesn't know that one is missing it.

But one keeps reading. And I am certain I understand more now than I did 20 years ago. Just think of how much more I'll see an appreciate in another 20 years!


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