''The Attenbury Emeralds'' is the third
Lord Peter Wimsey
Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey (later 17th Duke of Denver) is the fictional protagonist in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers (and their continuation by Jill Paton Walsh). A dilettante who solves mysteries for ...
-
Harriet Vane detective novel
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as s ...
written by
Jill Paton Walsh
Gillian Honorine Mary Herbert, Baroness Hemingford, (née Bliss; 29 April 1937 – 18 October 2020), known professionally as Jill Paton Walsh, was an English novelist and children's writer. She may be known best for her Booker Prize-nominated n ...
. Featuring characters created by
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers (; 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was an English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages.
She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between th ...
, it was written with the co-operation and approval of Sayers' estate. It was published by
Hodder & Stoughton
Hodder & Stoughton is a British publishing house, now an imprint (trade name), imprint of Hachette (publisher), Hachette.
History
Early history
The firm has its origins in the 1840s, with Matthew Hodder's employment, aged 14, with Messrs ...
in September 2010.
Plot summary
1921
''The Attenbury Emeralds'' recounts how Lord Peter begins his hobby of amateur sleuthing in 1921 by becoming involved in the recovery of the Attenbury
Emerald
Emerald is a gemstone and a variety of the mineral beryl (Be3Al2(SiO3)6) colored green by trace amounts of chromium or sometimes vanadium.Hurlbut, Cornelius S. Jr. and Kammerling, Robert C. (1991) ''Gemology'', John Wiley & Sons, New York, p ...
s. Lord Peter's "first case" is a mystery mentioned by Lord Peter's creator
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers (; 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was an English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages.
She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between th ...
in a number of novels, but until now never fully told.
The novel is set after World War II, but in its first chapters this seems like a mere
frame story
A frame is often a structural system that supports other components of a physical construction and/or steel frame that limits the construction's extent.
Frame and FRAME may also refer to:
Physical objects
In building construction
*Framing (con ...
, with Wimsey recounting to his wife Harriet the reminiscences of the start of his detecting career in 1921. As a
shell-shocked
Shell shock is a term coined in World War I by the British psychologist Charles Samuel Myers to describe the type of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) many soldiers were afflicted with during the war (before PTSD was termed). It is a react ...
veteran of the First World War, the young Wimsey had been invited to an engagement party at the house of the Attenburys, another aristocratic family. He was present when an emerald family heirloom disappeared, and discovered in himself a talent for detection—leading to the discovery of the missing stone (and incidentally saving his friends' daughter from marrying a rogue).
1951
In 1951, however, the story is still not over. There is at least one similar emerald, linked by inscribed parts of a quotation from the Persian poet
Hafez
Khwāje Shams-od-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī ( fa, خواجه شمسالدین محمّد حافظ شیرازی), known by his pen name Hafez (, ''Ḥāfeẓ'', 'the memorizer; the (safe) keeper'; 1325–1390) and as "Hafiz", ...
. An Indian
Maharaja
Mahārāja (; also spelled Maharajah, Maharaj) is a Sanskrit title for a "great ruler", "great king" or " high king".
A few ruled states informally called empires, including ruler raja Sri Gupta, founder of the ancient Indian Gupta Empire, an ...
to whose ancestors the emeralds once belonged seeks to reunite them. A patient killer has over decades committed several murders for the sake of these emeralds.
(In ''
Gaudy Night
''Gaudy Night'' (1935) is a mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the tenth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, and the third including Harriet Vane.
The dons of Harriet Vane's '' alma mater'', the all-female Shrewsbury College, Oxford (based on Say ...
'', Harriet had discovered a copy of Sir
Thomas Browne
Sir Thomas Browne (; 19 October 160519 October 1682) was an English polymath and author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science and medicine, religion and the esoteric. His writings display a deep curi ...
's ''
Religio Medici
''Religio Medici'' (''The Religion of a Doctor'') by Sir Thomas Browne is a spiritual testament and early psychological self-portrait. Published in 1643 after an unauthorized version was distributed the previous year, it became a European best-s ...
'' in Wimsey's pocket. When she questioned him about his tastes in literature he replied that it could just as easily have been "Hafiz
'sic''or Horace".)
Succession to the dukedom
During Wimsey's investigation of the mystery, there is a drastic change in his life. To his chagrin, he is forced to take up the title and duties of the 17th
Duke of Denver
In the works of Dorothy L. Sayers, the fictional title of Duke of Denver is held by Gerald Wimsey, older brother of the books' protagonist, Lord Peter Wimsey. In novels written after Sayers' death by Jill Paton Walsh (with the cooperation of the S ...
when his brother Gerald dies of a heart attack during a fire at Duke's Denver. In the fire, much of the historic building of Bredon Hall, with its imposing
Elizabethan
The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personifi ...
and
Jacobean façade, has been destroyed. However, the fire is stopped when it reaches a sturdy, thick-walled
Norman
Norman or Normans may refer to:
Ethnic and cultural identity
* The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries
** People or things connected with the Norm ...
building. This was the Wimsey family's original medieval residence which had been covered up, incorporated into the later structure, and forgotten for centuries, but which at the critical moment has saved the house's east wing from the fire, including the library with its priceless old books. At Harriet's suggestion, the new Duke of Denver decides not to reconstruct the house as it was before the fire but to live in the remaining part—an "odd but charming, asymmetrical structure" which is quite big enough for the present-day family—and to plant a garden where the destroyed part of the house had stood. Reviewer Margaret Copsewood suggested that losing 16th, 17th and 18th century additions and having to make do with the original Norman structure can be read as a metaphor for Britons having to adjust to the loss of their centuries-old Empire — a process taking place in the period in which the book is set
[Margaret Copsewood, "1950's England as remembered in later literature" in Dr. Mark Wheeler (ed.) "A Retrospective Look on The Twentieth Century in an Inter-Departmental History/Sociology/Literature/Philosophy Round Table]
References
External links
* .
{{DEFAULTSORT:Attenbury Emeralds, The
2010 British novels
English novels
British crime novels
Novels set during World War II
Fiction set in 1921
Fiction set in 1951
Hodder & Stoughton books