The Attenbury Emeralds

February 28, 2011
Walsh's interpretation of the classic characters of Dorothy L. Sayers labors under a somewhat lukewarm performance from narrator Edward Petherbridge. Decades after the fact, legendary sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey—along with his wife, novelist Harriet Vane, and his faithful manservant Bunter—looks back on his first case: retrieving missing emeralds belonging to the Attenbury family while recovering from shell shock after WWI. Petherbridge's narration is steady and clear but tends to plod. While he provides excellent voices for Wimsey (soft-spoken, aristocratic, playful, and genteel) and Bunter (slightly twangy, dignified, and the very soul of deference) and cultivates an enjoyable chemistry between the married Wimsey and Vane, Petherbridge could better distinguish the book's other characters, many of which sound vaguely familiar and blend into each other. A Minotaur hardcover.

Starred review from November 8, 2010
Walsh triumphantly follows 2003's A Presumption of Death, inspired by some letters Dorothy Sayers wrote depicting Peter Wimsey during WWII, with a wholly original interpretation of Sayers's golden age characters. In 1921, while Lord Peter was still convalescing from the nervous breakdown he suffered from his time in the WWI trenches, the aristocrat got involved in finding missing emeralds belonging to the Attenbury family. Thirty years later, the current Lord Attenbury, who's in dire financial straits, wishes to sell one of the jewels, "the king-stone," but a shadowy claimant challenges his ownership of it. When Wimsey and his detective novelist wife, Harriet Vane, look into the dispute, they discovery a chain of murders related to the emeralds. Walsh successfully recreates the tone and personalities of the originals and plausibly depicts the main characters later in life. Fans of literate period mysteries will clamor for more.