Lord Peter Wimsey Lord Peter Wimsey Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey 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 his own amusement, Wimsey is an archetype for the British gentleman detective. Lord Peter is often assisted by his valet and former batman, Mervyn Bunter; his good friend and later brother-in-law, police detective Charles Parker; and in a few books by Harriet Vane, who becomes his wife. Born in 1890 and ageing in real time, Wimsey is described as being of average
Lord Peter Wimsey and his family. Other recurring characters include Inspector Charles Parker, the family solicitor Mr Murbles, barrister Sir Impey Biggs, journalist Salcombe Hardy, and financial whiz the Honourable Freddy Arbuthnot, who finds himself entangled in the case in the first of the Wimsey books, "Whose Body?" ( 1923). Sayers wrote no more Wimsey murder mysteries, and only one story involving him, after the outbreak of the Second World War. In one of The Wimsey Papers, a series of fictionalised commentaries in the form of mock letters between members of the Wimsey family published in the Spectator, there is a reference to