Lord Peter Wimsey years and is attracted to him, though it is not explicitly stated whether they were lovers. Wimsey likes her, respects her, and enjoys her company—but that is not enough. In "Strong Poison", she is the first person other than Wimsey himself to realise that he has fallen in love with Harriet. In "Strong Poison" Lord Peter encounters Harriet Vane, a cerebral, Oxford-educated mystery writer, while she is on trial for the murder of her former lover. He falls in love with her at first sight. Wimsey saves her from the gallows, but she believes that gratitude is not a good
The Wimsey Papers at the time when European dictators were committing mass murders openly and with impunity. This seems to have been Sayers's own feeling, as she in fact abandoned during World War II the writing of murder mysteries and never took it up again. There is a repeated unfavorable opinion of the Soviet Union, in the aftermath of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the Soviet attack on Finland. The opinion that there was little to choose between communism and fascism, and that the two kinds of dictatorship are equally reprehensible, is given special prominence by being attributed to Lord Peter Wimsey himself. Other