A Presumption of Death
Nov. 17th, 2004 06:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlBorrowed A Presumption of Death from the library; it really isn't a bad one considering it's in a mobile classroom in a car park.
A Presumption of Death is written by Jill Paton Walsh, set in the period covered by the Wimsey Papers in the early part of 1940. I consider it as paid fanfiction rather than anything definitive about Peter's and Harriet's future. (I have a great envy of those who are paid for works in other people's fandoms, especially the Star Wars people who have made such a hash of it).
The plot is a pretty bog-standard murder-in-small-village. The setting is pretty much coloured by the war; one victim is a flirtatious landgirl, the other a German spy disguised as an RAF officer on sick leave. The spy plot is a little thin, the day being saved by Peter's ten-year-old nephew and his home-made crystal radio set (!)—I had one of those myself, and you were lucky to hear Radio Ulster on it, let alone Morse code German.
In my opinion, Paton Walsh's handling of Peter and Harriet, and of their relationship, has improved since she wrote Thrones, Dominations. I can't put my finger on much specific, but their interactions in A Presumption of Death seemed true to canon. They play the quotation game with Kirk, and allude to works without any tiresome explanation to each other about who Elizabeth Bennet is. I imagine it took Paton Walsh a while to get her hand in.
I knew the minute Harriet started trying poems against Peter's code, that it was their sonnet, the 'Here then at home' sonnet, that was the key. But then, I had the advantage of reading Gaudy Night the week before. I suppose this, and other frequent references to the Sayers canon, are inevitable in derivative fiction, but it can be overdone. (Incidentally, I think Here then at home would be a lovely title for some fic.)
However, the devil is in the details. I can't quite swallow a prep school in Duke's Denver, and isn't four years old a bit late to think of Eton?doesn't the name have to be down form birth? Nor can I quite accept Peter's addressing his valet's wife by her Christian name, or his gung-ho attitude to his offspring growing up middle-class. He always seemed regretful if resigned to the demise of the aristocracy. Also, the children are confusing: an extra little Parker, 'small Peter' Parker now being known as 'Charlie', and wasn't Roger Wimsey older than Paul (see Striding Folly)? The endnote to Thrones, Dominations states this as well.
Another of these pointless Paton Walsh changes is that the Delagardies hale from Sweden rather than France. There has been 'French blood at the back of the [Delagardie] family tree' as far back as Clouds of Witness, a fact stated by the unsympathetic Helen. It is attested separately by Uncle Paul, the Dowager Duchess and Peter himself that Peter is one-sixteenth French, and his mother and uncle one-eighth. It's not impossible that there should be Swedish connections too, but it's stretching credibility that no one should have mentioned it before.
Paton Walsh really shouldn't try to include Helen Denver; she just can't hit the right tone of unpleasantness and ends up looking like she's trying too had. The thing to remember about Helen is she's the sort of person who would say, 'Snobbery is so middle-class'.
The way sex is talked about in the book doesn't seem period either; obviously people did it, especially in wartime, but they didn't publish it. Peter and Harriet talk about it in canon, but are much more circumlocutory and literary about it, so that A Presumption of Death comes across as a modern novel set in WWII rather than a novel of the period. But I suppose that matters according to whether one wants a further tale featuring Peter and Harriet, or a close imitation of a Sayers novel.
However, all these nitpicks didn't destroy my enjoyment of the book. I would say it's worth reading, but only after you have finished all the Sayers originals.
A Presumption of Death is written by Jill Paton Walsh, set in the period covered by the Wimsey Papers in the early part of 1940. I consider it as paid fanfiction rather than anything definitive about Peter's and Harriet's future. (I have a great envy of those who are paid for works in other people's fandoms, especially the Star Wars people who have made such a hash of it).
The plot is a pretty bog-standard murder-in-small-village. The setting is pretty much coloured by the war; one victim is a flirtatious landgirl, the other a German spy disguised as an RAF officer on sick leave. The spy plot is a little thin, the day being saved by Peter's ten-year-old nephew and his home-made crystal radio set (!)—I had one of those myself, and you were lucky to hear Radio Ulster on it, let alone Morse code German.
In my opinion, Paton Walsh's handling of Peter and Harriet, and of their relationship, has improved since she wrote Thrones, Dominations. I can't put my finger on much specific, but their interactions in A Presumption of Death seemed true to canon. They play the quotation game with Kirk, and allude to works without any tiresome explanation to each other about who Elizabeth Bennet is. I imagine it took Paton Walsh a while to get her hand in.
I knew the minute Harriet started trying poems against Peter's code, that it was their sonnet, the 'Here then at home' sonnet, that was the key. But then, I had the advantage of reading Gaudy Night the week before. I suppose this, and other frequent references to the Sayers canon, are inevitable in derivative fiction, but it can be overdone. (Incidentally, I think Here then at home would be a lovely title for some fic.)
However, the devil is in the details. I can't quite swallow a prep school in Duke's Denver, and isn't four years old a bit late to think of Eton?doesn't the name have to be down form birth? Nor can I quite accept Peter's addressing his valet's wife by her Christian name, or his gung-ho attitude to his offspring growing up middle-class. He always seemed regretful if resigned to the demise of the aristocracy. Also, the children are confusing: an extra little Parker, 'small Peter' Parker now being known as 'Charlie', and wasn't Roger Wimsey older than Paul (see Striding Folly)? The endnote to Thrones, Dominations states this as well.
Another of these pointless Paton Walsh changes is that the Delagardies hale from Sweden rather than France. There has been 'French blood at the back of the [Delagardie] family tree' as far back as Clouds of Witness, a fact stated by the unsympathetic Helen. It is attested separately by Uncle Paul, the Dowager Duchess and Peter himself that Peter is one-sixteenth French, and his mother and uncle one-eighth. It's not impossible that there should be Swedish connections too, but it's stretching credibility that no one should have mentioned it before.
Paton Walsh really shouldn't try to include Helen Denver; she just can't hit the right tone of unpleasantness and ends up looking like she's trying too had. The thing to remember about Helen is she's the sort of person who would say, 'Snobbery is so middle-class'.
The way sex is talked about in the book doesn't seem period either; obviously people did it, especially in wartime, but they didn't publish it. Peter and Harriet talk about it in canon, but are much more circumlocutory and literary about it, so that A Presumption of Death comes across as a modern novel set in WWII rather than a novel of the period. But I suppose that matters according to whether one wants a further tale featuring Peter and Harriet, or a close imitation of a Sayers novel.
However, all these nitpicks didn't destroy my enjoyment of the book. I would say it's worth reading, but only after you have finished all the Sayers originals.
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 08:16 pm (UTC)I don't have a problem with Peter calling Bunter's wife by her first name (can't remember it). After all, she is a good friend of Harriet's, and Bunter *is* his closest male friend (and Mervyn is too terrifying a name to even contemplate). This is a man who sits down in a pub with the woman he is courting and his valet and cheerfully has a drink with both - when it comes to certain conventions, Peter doesn't give a rat's arse. Also, calling her Mrs Bunter would imply that she too is a servant - which of course, she's not. She's married to one of his servants, but the entire household has been at pains to establish a distinction, therefore she comes into the social circle as the friend of Harriet and the wife of one of Peter's friends (note, not the wife of his servant). Yes, he can call other people by their titles, but Mrs B. is the wife of someone he doesn't call by a title, therefore, it would be a false distinction to call her by one. (Not to mention the fact that Mrs Bunter is induitably the legendary Mrs Bunter Senior, mother to both Mervyn and Meredith.)
The radio is explained by the fact that they're picking up local broadcasts - it's within five miles of the boys or less and would have to be a reaasonably powerful transmission to reach Germany.
I could see Peter utterly choosing to raise his offspring middle-class - after all, the property is entirely entailed on Bredon, so the boys will be limited in private incomes (I suspect a daughter would get more generous treatment) and Peter would bring them up to *do* something. Not having anything to do nearly killed him once.
Also, I think the school at Duke's Denver came from Sayers herself (she did a series for the Spectator during the war with letters from various Wimseys) and it's entirely in keeping with the period. I've got a fascinating book called the Country House at War, and many did have schools (some of them decidedly not public schools) landed on them. Gerald's reaction to the bright kid and Peter's bribe suggestion are both entirely in character to me.
Paton-Walsh did need a compelling reason to have Peter solidly ensconced at Tallboys in the later part of the war, and his exhaustion from that mission would explain it.
The only thing that really stank to me were the Duchess's letters at the beginning - Honoria, bless her, would *never* have felt the need to explain the titles and whatnot to a friend, and I find it very strange that it's in the book at all. I suspect an editorial insertion for the American market, actually, since Paton-Walsh usually has a better technique than that.
What really struck me about the Paton-Walsh books was that all the bits that seemed to be unSayers all turned out to be pure Sayers. My favourite bit, though, has to be Bunter's wedding in Thrones, Dominations. It's so utterly Peter and Bunter.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 09:13 pm (UTC)Some at least of the DDD's letters were from the 'Wimsey Papers' which Sayers published in the Spectator, I think, in the first year or so of the war. I found them in a library somewhere, but I do think there were some Paton Walsh additions to them.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-17 09:13 pm (UTC)