Gaudy Night: A Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery with Harriet Vane – A Celebrated Golden Age Classic Where University Reunion Becomes Target for Murder

Gaudy Night stands out even among Miss Sayers’s novels. And Miss Sayers has long stood in a class by herself.” —Times Literary Supplement

The great Dorothy L. Sayers is considered by many to be the premier detective novelist of the Golden Age, and her dashing sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, one of mystery fiction’s most enduring and endearing protagonists. Acclaimed author Ruth Rendell has expressed her admiration for Sayers’s work, praising her “great fertility of invention, ingenuity, and wonderful eye for detail.” The third Dorothy L. Sayers classic to feature mystery writer Harriet Vane, Gaudy Night features an introduction by Elizabeth George, herself a crime fiction master. Gaudy Night takes Harriet and her paramour, Lord Peter, to Oxford University, Harriet’s alma mater, for a reunion, only to find themselves the targets of a nightmare of harassment and mysterious, murderous threats.

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Published Oct 16, 2012

544 pages

Average rating: 8

17 RATINGS

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Community Reviews

Sue Dix
Mar 14, 2026
10/10 stars
An extremely involved, beautifully complicated mystery, with gorgeous descriptions of university life and environs. The story has a distinct feminist bent and so I’m not satisfied with the ending between Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey. It feels like a cop out, but more true to the times, perhaps? Otherwise, I loved it!

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