The Late Scholar: Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane Investigate / Jill Paton Walsh. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2013 (hardcover 9781444760866). 356 pages.

An excellent read, and a pleasant revisit with Dorothy L. Sayers' beloved sleuths Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. Walsh now has a fair track record with these characters, and has well captured the essence of their maturing relationship.

That said, I find myself quibbling with various aspects of this book. I'm afraid it is not quite up to par with Thrones, Dominations (1998), A Presumption of Death (2002), and The Attenbury Emeralds (2010), Walsh's previous continuations of the saga. This is, perhaps, to be expected; the first two books had the advantage of working off material left by the original author—Sayers's incomplete draft in the first instance, and her wartime pieces "The Wimsey Papers" in the second—while the third book extrapolated from hints Sayers left about Wimsey's untold first case.

The Late Scholar can therefore in a way be regarded as Walsh's first solo effort in the series. The results are mixed, and Walsh on her own can hardly escape suffering from the inevitable comparison with Sayers on her own. The action is unfortunately marred by a superfluity of dead bodies, which rather clashes with the quiet, studious setting of Oxford. (Sayers got through Gaudy Night, her own Oxford-set Wimsey mystery, without any murders at all.) The book's status as a historical rather than a contemporary novel is highlighted by Walsh's name-dropping of actual Oxfordian literary figures into it; she would have been better advised to downplay or even omit these. Their presence disrupts the illusion were are in Sayers's version of Oxford; as such figures are notably absent from Gaudy Night, we question why they're now all of a sudden crowding in.

The plot is also less tight than one might wish. Even though the various plot threads all connect with the "late scholar" of the title, the fact that he died offstage well before the time of action in an undisputed suicide somewhat inhibits the book in "finding its legs," as it were. The revelation of what turn out to be two criminal schemes by two separate criminals makes for an untidy puzzle, and the copycat nature of the serial killings, aping murder methods from previous Wimsey cases, feels gratuitous.

For all that, the two protagonists are as fun as ever, and so is the story—if one is willing to overlook all the dons dropping like flies in the background!

Four out of five stars.

—Brian.