"A PRESUMPTION OF DEATH" by Jill Paton Walsh & Dorothy L. Sayers (B)

Dorothy L. Sayers was among the first female graduates from Oxford University and she went on to have a distinguished career in several literary fields, including that of being one of the finest authors of mystery novels during the early 20th Century. Her many stories starring the witty and urbane sleuth known as Lord Peter Wimsey have delighted millions with most of her novels being made into BBC television productions and later exported to the US under the PBS banner.

Sayers died in 1957 with one unfinished novel and notes for a second novel to be known as "A Presumption of Death." Jill Paton Walsh, an award-winning author in her own right, had earlier completed the unfinished Sayers novel, "Thrones, Dominations," a work for which she received considerable critical acclaim for its having been written in the best Sayers tradition.

After that success, Walsh filled in and fleshed out Sayer's notes for "A Presumption of Death" with this 2002 tale about World War II life in the British countryside filled with war time sacrifice, deprivation, and intrigue. Some of the more fascinating elements of this novel have to do with how the residents in the country coped with the massive migration of citizens away from the large industrial cities to avoid being bombed in the Blitz. The descriptions of daily living are very interesting and add a great deal of texture to the story.

The former Harriet Vane is now known as Lady Peter Wimsey and she and Peter are the proud parents of two precocious toddlers. Lord Peter has been away for some time on a secret mission for the Foreign Office, leaving Harriet to care for their children at Talboys, their country farmhouse in Paggleham. She is also caring for the two children of Lord Peter's sister, Lady Mary, and her husband, Charles Parker, both of whom have remained in London. Mary works for the government while Peter's great friend and fellow sleuth, "Parker-Bird," remains at his post as CID Chief Inspector for Scotland Yard.

Harriet steps in to help the local constable when the body of a young woman known as Wendy Percival is discovered near the village square while the citizens of Paggleham are ascending above ground from the two air raid shelters. The victim was a pretty young thing who scandalized the older biddies of Paggleham with her city ways and her playful romances with several of the local love-struck males. Superintendent Kirk, a very decent man and the constable for the area, wisely felt that Lady Mary could get far more information than he ever could if she interviewed the friends of the victim.

Wendy Percival was among the group of young ladies known somewhat derisively as "land-girls," unmarried females who were sent to the countryside to help in the war effort by filling in for the males who had been sent off to war. Often the city girls with their more sophisticated mores were too much of a temptation for the local farm boys.

Wendy was a known flirt, and several of the young men still left in town had fallen hard for her. This brings up the possibility of jealousy as a motive for her murder, but the one person Lady Mary feels might have the most light to shed on this case is an injured air force officer who has been recuperating at a house in the village. Lieutenant Brinklow is a dashing man who might have known Wendy, but he has suddenly disappeared.

The joy of reading this book will primarily accrue to the fans of Sayer's earlier novels and the seven or so televised BBC presentations. It will also appeal to Anglophiles who want to have a very descriptive taste of what life was like in the British countryside during World War Two. In my opinion, Jill Paton Walsh isn't quite the writer that Sayers was, but she is very loyal to the story and its characters, and that counts for a lot. Otherwise, it will strike many as rather dated and far more formal in style than most detective works today.

Like many other novelists, the Peter Wimsey mystery series was written in a biographical format with Wimsey and many of his associates, especially his loyal valet and all around handyman, Bunter, coming to life. The characters are mostly all still here: His imperious but loving mother, the Dowager Duchess, his somewhat dim brother, Gerald, and Helen, Gerald's porcelain snob of a wife.

Lord Peter's sister, Mary, and her husband, Peter Parker, remain mostly in the background, but Lord Peter's relationship with Harriet has blossomed into one of deep devotion and tender feelings filled with love, mutual respect, and a deeply abiding intellectual curiosity about life and solving the mystery of the moment. 2002, Hodder and Stoughton, 376 pages.