And it, in turn, plucked me out of the sense that I was trapped on some perilous brink. A collection of Sayers’s stories, Lord Peter: The Complete Lord Peter Wimsey Stories, had sat on my shelf for years I picked it up. I have always turned to detective stories when I feel vulnerable there is nothing so relaxing as the promise that even the grisliest problem can, with the correct approach, be neatly solved. The unexpected, devastating end of a COVID-era romance had left me feeling everything, even boredom, with frightening intensity.

Sayers-whose first novel, Whose Body?, was published a century ago this year-in January 2022.

I first encountered Wimsey, the most famous creation of the mystery novelist Dorothy L.

And Lord Peter Wimsey-scion of the aristocracy military hero buoyant connoisseur of wine, rare books, piano music, and women-is on the hunt for his next beguiling case. Humanity has gone through hell and emerged strung between merry, hectic giddiness and entrenched, unspeakable grief.