Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Gaudy Night- Dorothy Sayers

After having read all of the Peter Wimsey volumes in quick succession last winter, I'm now embarking on the final two volumes of Sayers' murder mysteries. I just finished reading Gaudy Night, which is a wonderful evocation of college life at a woman's college in the early 20th century. Sayers is often good at this- especially when Peter Wimsey the aristocrat poses as an advertising agent in an ad agency in Murder Must Advertise. Or The Nine Tailors, where you learn more than you might even want to know about cantaneeling.

Sayers is known also as an Anglican theologian gifted in writing doctrinal works. There were a number of English writers of this ilk, some more famous than Sayers- G. K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, etc. But for my money, Sayers is the best novelist, even though she is a genre writer. I'm now on to Busman's Honeymoon, the last full volume she completed before her death. It brings together in marriage two great detectives- one an aristocrat who investigates as a hobby, the other a novelist who investigages for her career writing fiction.

If anyone gives you the assignment of studying vocation from a Christian perspective, read these novels.

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