Other editions of book Busman's Honeymoon: Classic crime for Agatha Christie fans

Murder is hardly the best way for Lord Peter and his bride, the famous mystery writer Harriet Vane, to start their honeymoon. It all begins when the former owner of their newly acquired estate is found quite nastily dead in the cellar. And what Lord Peter had hoped would be a very private and romantic stay in the country soon turns into a most baffling case, what with the misspelled "notise" to the milkman and the intriguing condition of the dead man -- not a spot of blood on his smashed skull and not a pence less than six hundred pounds in his pocket.

Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. 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 World War I and World War II that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. Lord Peter Wimsey burst upon the world of detective fiction with an explosive "Oh, damn!" and continued to engage readers in ten novels and two sets of short stories; the final novel ended with a very different "Oh, damn!". Sayers introduced detective novelist Harriet Vane in Strong Poison. Sayers remarked more than once that she had developed the "husky voiced, dark-eyed" Harriet to put an end to Lord Peter via matrimony. But in the course of writing Gaudy Night, Sayers imbued Lord Peter and Harriet with so much life that she was never able, as she put it, to "see Lord Peter exit the stage". After an engagement of some months following the events at the end of Gaudy Night, Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane marry. They plan to spend their honeymoon at Talboys, an old farmhouse in Harriet's native Hertfordshire which Wimsey has bought for her, and they abscond from the wedding reception, evading the assembled reporters. Arriving late at night, they are surprised to find the house locked up and not prepared for them. They gain access and spend their wedding night there, but next morning they discover the former owner, Noakes, dead in the cellar with head injuries. The quiet honeymoon is ruined as a murder investigation begins and the house fills with policemen, reporters, and brokers' men distraining Noakes' hideous furniture. Peter's and Harriet's relationship, always complex and painfully negotiated, is resolved during the process of catching the murderer and bringing him to justice.