The Attenbury emeralds

by Jill Paton Walsh

Paper Book, 2010

Status

Available

Publication

London : Hodder & Stoughton, 2010.

Description

This mystery finds Lord Peter Wimsey revisiting his first case from thirty years earlier when the descendant of Lord Attenbury begs his help in proving the ownership of a priceless cache of emeralds.

User reviews

LibraryThing member justchris
The Attenbury Emeralds was better than A Presumption of Death--I made it through the book without wanting to hurl (either the book or my breakfast). And the malefactor wasn't painfully obvious. But Paton Walsh is no Sayers, and it pains me to see her try. I wonder how much is because Paton Walsh is
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accustomed to writing for modern readers and thus feels the need to carefully hold the reader's hand, lay out the crumb trail without any breaks or jumps for the reader to follow, and generally has low expectations of the audience. She does an awful lot of a viewpoint character explicitly interpreting another character's actions/reactions/body language, etc. Not so many literary allusions liberally peppering Peter's dialogue either. The Dowager Duchess does not sparkle and confound herself in full-paragraph periods of malapropisms and charming stream of consciousness.

The social commentary that takes up much of the story and drips from *every* character's mouth (and all pointed in the same direction! as if they're a hive mind!) also is most unlike Sayers. Peter's PTSD symptoms from past and current events are referenced pretty casually and openly by many characters, and discussed very directly in group settings, again very uncharacteristic for Peter and Harriet and Sayers' approach to the topic. None of the key characters really sound or act like themselves. I also am not okay with the plot twists thrown in to seriously alter the nature of the characters and their place in the world. It goes beyond taking liberties into distorting the characters beyond all recognition, bombing canon to kingdom come. Did not like. Do not approve. Never reading another of her Lord Peter Wimsey attempts. Reread the originals foreva!

Notice I have yet to mention the mystery? These are mystery books, right? Kinda sorta. The mystery is pretty secondhand, lukewarm, largely off-screen. It doesn't really engage the reader, and takes a backseat to both the social commentary and the transmogrification of the characters' lives. And in the closing pages, somehow Harriet has more insight into the human heart than Lord Peter, particularly when it comes to class consciousness? I don't think so. I guess there's no pleasing fans. I'm okay with that. When the originals gems are so original, the paste copies just lack the brilliance and seem little more than glitter and glue.
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LibraryThing member jjmcgaffey
Hmmmph. Well, for one thing, it's barely a detective story - it's a study of English society, at several levels and in two (or more) times. Before the War, after the war, and (a bit) during. There is a mystery told and unraveled, but that's more of a frame to the study of society; I, at least, was
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never caught up in the mystery at all. It's also awkward because for a long time it's not sure there is a mystery, it's just a series of odd events. It turns out to be multiple murder, but none of them strike home, not even the one where we get to meet the victim - it's presented very coldly. Pretty much pure telling rather than showing. There are also two flaws in the story as a mystery - an object mentioned early on that shouldn't have been of importance until much later, when it's explained, and a description...well, Peter says that there was no inscription on the back of the one he found. Except there should have been, by the way they worked things out - not the one they expected, but an inscription. The one without an inscription is the paste. That's annoying. Then there's the way the author jerks the Wimseys around - one death mentioned in passing, no more than a tossed-off sentence, and another in a moment of crisis that changes everything for Peter and Harriet. It feels like she's messing with something that doesn't belong to her. So - fails as a story (too much telling), fails as a mystery (too obscure, plus two egregious errors), and fails as a Wimsey story because it doesn't feel that Walsh has the right to make those changes. I rather like the way Peter and Harriet handle them, and the changes in Dukes Denver sound excellent, but still. I'm glad I read it, I won't read it again. And I really hope Walsh isn't going to write any more.
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LibraryThing member JaneSteen
Where I got the book: purchased on Amazon.

SPOILER WARNING: I can't discuss one particular point without a massive spoiler, so please don't read this if you're intending to read the book. I think this particular plot twist deserves to jump out at you from a dark corner, but I also feel it's
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important to discuss it.

HORRIBLY LONG REVIEW WARNING: enough said.

Reading this book set me thinking about characters. Writers are always being told that the best books are character-driven, but if you think about it, most books do not contain memorable characters. Casting my mind around I can think of a few examples from past and present: Diana Gabaldon's Jamie and Claire (and arguably Lord John); Rhett and Scarlett; Hilary Mantel's take on Thomas Cromwell; Scrooge; Severus Snape; Gandalf; Amelia Peabody and her various family members; and, of course, Lord Peter Wimsey, Harriet Vane and some (not all) of their supporting characters.

That's my short list, although more examples crowd into my head as I write. It's subjective, of course - I've always found Edward and Bella dreary, but I'll acknowledge that they come alive for many fans. And that's what, imho, produces fan fiction; characters that can and, in our minds, do walk off the page and take up an independent existence in our imagination.

Here we have a peculiar example of sanctioned fan fiction: the Dorothy L. Sayers estate gave Jill Paton Walsh permission to write stories for publication about characters that still enjoy copyright status (if I can say such a thing). Until these books started appearing I, like most Wimsey fans, had LPW and Harriet locked in my head, existing eternally in the eternal sunshine of a vanished world, detecting and writing and never having to worry about doing the washing up.

So now (finally!) we get to my difficulty with the first part of this book. We've jumped ahead maybe 7 or 8 years from A Presumption of Death. WWII is done and dusted, and we are in the sober, gritty years of the post-war period. Lord Peter is--I tremble to think of it--SIXTY, and I feel like I've awakened from a Rip Van Winkle sleep to find out my children are now grandmothers. GAAAAAH. He clearly doesn't have enough to do; his first mission is to procure a copy of a missing teaspoon. DOUBLE GAAAAH, even if it IS antique silver. He starts out the novel by sitting around psychoanalyzing his past self. MORE GAAAH THAN I CAN GET INTO A GAAAAAAAH, even a very long one. To be brief, this opening just doesn't work for me. It feels like fan fiction of the worst kind, even if Paton Walsh does write well (although not, as other critics have noted, with Sayers' referential erudition; this is, on the whole, a bad thing even if DLS's later books were a leeeetle bit too quote-sprinkled for my liking).

The most interesting point at the outset of this book is that the characters have caught up with what we, as readers born well after WWII, always knew; that the world of the original Wimsey books is lost and gone forever. Sayers' London is irrevocably altered in this novel; I was touched when one character describes St. Paul's surrounded by ruins in which wildflowers are growing, several years after the War's end. (As a small child in the mid-60s I remember that there were still many traces of the War, in a country which did not have the financial resources to recover quickly; air-raid shelters still stood here and there and I remember being told that what looked like demolition sites were in fact bomb sites, 20 years after the War's end. It was only after I came to live in a country that's never been bombed that the full significance of this percolated into my brain.) A Labor government has set about dismantling the power and wealth of the aristocracy with that most deadly of weapons, death duties, making the great homes of the pre-WWI period into millstone liabilities. I give full credit to Paton Walsh for not just refusing to gloss over these facts of life (it would have been so easy to stick to a fantasy of wealth and privilege) but for making them a part of the fabric of her plot. Not only does the need to pay death duties drive much of the action, but later developments in the book bring the theme of responsibility that's a leitmotiv of Wimsey's existence into sharp focus.

The unfortunate first part of the book revolves around LPW's reminiscences about his first case, the missing Attenbury emeralds. It's the sitting-around-talking-then-wavy-lines-flashback structure that's the joykiller here, although I must admit I'm hard put to imagine how Paton Walsh could have told the story in, as it were, real time because her books are about Peter AND Harriet, and in the early 20s there was no Harriet. Still, I spent much time huffing over the fanfictiony feel of these introductory chapters.

And then, suddenly, by an ENORMOUS COINCIDENCE (seriously, Ms Paton Walsh?) we have a new problem concerning the same emeralds in the book's present day. After I got over snorting about the ENORMOUS COINCIDENCE, I suddenly realized I was enjoying the book. Perhaps if we'd started with the current action and brought in the previous story of the emeralds in short flashbacks, instead of reminiscing over sherry? I don't think it would have been beyond a good writer's brain to do this. From this point on I felt like I was back in Wimsey-world: following up clues, interviewing witnesses, albeit in a clearly altered world. All good.

Until...

The fire at Duke's Denver. I did not see that coming. What I said at the time is unprintable, so let's just say that I was a little upset. Remember what I said about the eternal sunshine? The whole point of LPW is that he's a relatively carefree younger son, able to gad about and detect things without being tied to a job. And then Paton Walsh, in one stroke, lands him with all the responsibility he's feared all his life, plus a new title.

I did not throw the book across the room at this point, but read on. And somehow managed to be reconciled to this utter destruction of the fundamentals of the Wimsey universe, mostly because the down-to-earth well-there-it-is-let's-get-on-with-it, terribly BRITISH attitude of Harriet, Bunter and their various sons a) keep Wimsey from going overly pear-shaped about the responsibility and b) make the whole switcheroo seem almost, well, inevitable. Especially Harriet's embracing her role as Duchess and starting on a garden where half the house once stood (which is probably exactly what I would have done!) because there's a philosophical point there, something about making good out of ill but I don't want to get into analyzing it. Of course there was still, at this point, the little matter of rounding out the story of the emeralds, but I got a feeling of closure. As if this is definitely, finally, the last Peter and Harriet book (their love embodied in Indian marble) and I could leave them in the eternal sunshine (metaphorically; we are, after all, talking about England) of their own Garden of Eden.

Some reviewers have said that there are two stories in this book. I'd say there were three. They're linked, but the linkages are not, to my mind, made with quite the structural firmness that would have really satisfied me. It's a well-written book (from the point of view of readability) and probably worth reading again, so I'm giving it 4 stars; but they're a weak 4, more like a 3.6.
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LibraryThing member whirligigwitch
Slow paced to start with but an enjoyable sequel to the Dorothy L Sayers series. I found the portrayal of society in the midst of serious change and upheaval of accepted social order quite well drawn and fascinating. The principal characters - Harriet, Lord Peter, Bunter and The Dowager Duchess
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were well drawn and consistent with the original Sayers creations.
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LibraryThing member auntieknickers
This is, I think, the third of Jill Paton Walsh's books using the characters of Dorothy L. Sayers. Some may find them heresy and others, like me, will enjoy meeting Harriet and Lord Peter again. In this book it's 1951 and Harriet asks Lord Peter to tell her about one of his earliest cases, The
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Attenbury Emeralds (referred to in at least one of Sayers's books). He and Bunter tell about the emeralds and the later case of the Attenbury diamonds, and then the present Lord Attenbury arrives at the Wimseys' London home with a new problem involving the emeralds. During the investigation, some major changes occur in the Wimseys' life as well. The plot is a bit far-fetched but I enjoyed the book. There were a few locutions that bothered me. I don't think that even if many Brits were saying "Okay" after the war, that Wimsey would have so far changed his habitual style of speech as to use that word. And when a character uses "into" in the sense of "deeply interested in", I feel I'm in the 1990s at least rather than the 1950s.
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LibraryThing member JudithProctor
This book really disappointed me.

I was looking forward to the prequel of how the Attenbury emerald mystery was solved, but the writing style of the first half with it's first person recollection of events in the past told by Wimsey and Bunter felt clumsy and not like a Sayers novel. When events
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moved to the present and later events befalling the emeralds, the style felt more familiar, though I did notice that the characters tended to quote from books that would probably still be familiar to modern readers (eg. Pooh bear and Alice in Wonderland) rather than Sayers wider range. (you may regard this as a good or bad thing depending on your preference)

The solution to the plot relied on a horrendous number of coincidences, which I guess I can't really complain about given that Sayers was almost as guilty in Clouds of Witness....

However, I'm not currently inspired to try any more of Paton Walsh's Wimsey novels.
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LibraryThing member Helenliz
I listened to this on a nifty gadget form the library called Playaway. It's a mp3 player loaded with the one book, so no need to have your own mp3 player and deal with the hassles of downloading, you just need a battery and, in my case, a lead to connect it to the headphone socket of the car. Fab.
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No more changing CDs while hurtling along at high(ish) speed. Once I got the technology sorted, using it was ace.
So, now to the book. I remain slightly unconvinced by this. Set in 1951, it starts when Harriet sees the obituary of Lord Attenbury, and so the details of Peter's first case, that of the Attenbury Emeralds, come out. this is mentioned on several occasions in the DL Sayers Wimsey books, but the detail are never disclosed. The telling becomes painful as it uncovers more of the physiological issues Peter suffered after the war (at this time when we're remembering the dead of WW1, it is worth remembering that those who survived often suffered both physical and mental distress for many years, stretching to decades, after the conflict finished). And so the case appears closed - but then the new Lord Attenbury (a pompous young man) and there's an issue with the the merald - someone else claims its theirs. and so there begins a lot o digging into the past of the Attenbury family. I pinned it on the wrong person, but the conclusion was neatly tied up.
This next bit is spoilerville - I haven't read all of the subsequent works by JPW, so I had missed that Peter was now heir to the Dukedom. And he duly inherits just as the ancestral pile is burnt to the ground. He doesn't like this one bit, but duly does his duty, and Harriet does her best as well. Helen manages to be a awful as ever. But this still leaves me uncomfortable about the books continuing into the post war period. It seems to me that Peter should be left frozen in a timeless late youth, it's the age that seems to suit him best. I know that even during the DLS books he matures from gay man about town to married man and settles down, but to now see him at 60 and beginning to look like an anachronism in an increasingly modern age doesn't feel very kind. I'm not sure where she can take him from here and I'm not sure Peter in his dotage is something I want to see.
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LibraryThing member Dorritt
As a fan of the original Sayers' mysteries, approached this with trepidation. Would the author do justice to the characters, the mood, the voice of the Sayers originals? In a word, yes. Which is, as it turns out, both fortunate and regrettable.

What I suspect most fans value in the original Wimsey
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stories is here: the deep relationship between Peter and Harriet, the witty literary references that zing like fireworks through the text, the charming cast of supporting characters (Bunter, The Dowager Duchess Honoria, Gerald/Helen, Inspector Parker/Mary, and the Honorable Freddy Arbuthnot all make appearances in this tale). Walsh does a generally creditable job of extrapolating the relationship between Peter and Harriet decades into their marriage, of capturing the psychological complexities of the characters, and of portraying accurately the social and cultural complexities of post-WWII England.

But, what many readers object to in Sayers' tales is also here: namely, an overly-complex mystery whose solution hinges on a complex analysis of alibis and timetables, long on clever repartee but noticeably short on action. In this case, the plot involves a set of dazzling emeralds, a country house full of suspects, and a plot that extends over 30yrs. Honestly, I don't think most readers are going to be able to ferret out the solution without resorting to calendars, lists of suspects, and possibly a flow chart.

Which isn't to say that Walsh doesn't contribute a few flaws of her own. I found the first part of the novel, in which Peter narrates his past association with the emeralds, somewhat tedious (don't they teach authors in Writing 101 that it's better to show than tell what's happening?). Eventually, however, the tale does finally shift into the present tense, and by the time personal matters (which I won't disclose here) intrude upon the ongoing investigation, the author had me hooked.

This definitely isn't meant to be a reader's first exposure to this cast of characters. But if you're already a Peter Wimsey fan, go ahead and let your guard down - there's nothing here to offend, and chances are you'll walk away with a smile on your face, grateful at having had the opportunity to spend a few more hours in Lord Peter's good company.
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LibraryThing member hailelib
The war is finally over and Lord Peter, Harriet, and their family have settled into post-war life. Thirty years after the original Attenbury 'case' young Lord Attenbury comes to Peter for help. There is a mystery aurrounding the famous large emerald that the Attenbury family has always kept in the
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bank because it is too valuable for use on other than state occasions. Can Lord Peter solve this mystery? And are any of the deaths associated with it over the years actually murder? With the help of Harriet and Bunter, Lord Peter does solve the puzzle of the emerald even though he is interrupted by a family crisis.

Some nice glimpses into life in England during the post-war era and a nice visit with the Wimseys. Though Walsh isn't as really another Sayers I will still be reading [A Presumption of Death] which takes place during the war at Talboys.
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LibraryThing member themulhern
This book retains many of the flaws of Sayers' original works and adds some of its own. Sayers was one of the many feminist Quislings of her era, taking advantage of the gains of prior and current feminists, while simultaneously repudiating them. Jill Paton Walsh retains this aspect of the prior
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work. In a departure from Sayers original works, various foreigners are treated obtrusively as equals by Lord Peter, leaving the general impression that after WWII only women are still continued to be inferior. There is a tremendous and grating focus on the preservation or erasure of class distinctions by various parties. We can never know how Sayers would really have dealt with the aftermath of WWII, but probably with a little more panache. There is a terrible overuse of adverbs. Sayers may not have been a good writer, but she was talented and clever, and her prose moved along nicely avoiding this verbal clutter. The accumulated offspring are cloying and awful. Helen, Peter's sister-in-law, is a caricature of a caricature.

Edward Petherbridge's reading is excellent. Harriet Vane's voice is distinctive, but not over high.

I am not at all sure that Jill Paton Walsh is a poor author. I remember reading some of her historical fiction for young adults when I was younger and liking it very much. Perhaps the challenge of writing a pastiche of a very distinctive and difficult author would have been too much for anybody. Perhaps it would have been better to write a novel where the crime is actually set and detected in Lord Peter's original milieu and time.
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LibraryThing member Maya47Bob46
This was Paton Walsh's first "solo" Sayers book. I didn't like it as much as Presumption of Death but I did enjoy the glimspes of post war London and the changing dynamic between Peter and Bunter.
LibraryThing member ritaer
Walsh's skill in catching the tone of Lord Peter Wimsey is enhanced in this recorded version by the narrative voice of Edward Petherbridge. However, what I take to be the author's views on the British aristocracy seems to shape the story as the Denvers fall into regrettable decline while the
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Attenbury's slip into a deserved one. While the shadow of the coming of WW II falls over the last Whimsey stories written by Sayers herself, the results of that war lie rather heavily on this work. However, for those who read for character and plot rather than for cultural patterns and nuance, the plot is satisfyingly complex and the villain suitably difficult to detect, hidden in the best classic style, in plain sight from the start.
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LibraryThing member melaniehope
This is the third book in the series. I tried reading the first 2 books, but never made it past the first few chapters. So I was so surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. It was like settling down to a good old-fashioned mystery movie. I like that a character list is included in the book, and
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so you could read The Attenbury Emeralds even if you have not read any other in the series. The characters were believable and the mystery was fun! Well done book and a must read for mystery fans or not!
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LibraryThing member phoebesmum
More stars than there are in the midnight sky to Jill Paton Walsh for giving Lord Peter back to us. There are flaws, or occlusions perhaps, as there are in the eponymous emerald - would Lord Peter ever have said "throwing a wobbly" or, indeed, "okay"? - but, weight for weight and carat by carat,
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these are easily forgivable. A jewel in the Wimsey coronet.
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LibraryThing member Keeline
She captured the characters well, had an interesting story that takes place both in Wimsey's past and "present" and brings up many of our favorite characters from the series. I'm a fan of Sayers and it was nice to be able to read something that felt like one of her late Wimsey stories.
LibraryThing member aulsmith
There are a few bloppers that I think the Magistra would have avoided, including a very odd narrative style at the beginning and some awkward plotting, but I thoroughly enjoyed this visit with my old friends and was glad to see them getting on so well.
LibraryThing member MissJessie
Actually 3.5 stars would be better.

I won this book thru the Giveaways program; thanks very much! It was one I particularly wanted.

This book is set in the later years of the Wimsey's lives; their children are well into their Eton years; Bunter still functions as the perfect man servant, but
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occasionally dines at the Wimsey's table with his wife; Peter still collects old books; Harriet still writes. Helen is still a pain in the rear.

The mystery portion of the book, particularly in the later part, was well done and entertaining, though not gripping.

More interesting to me was the handling of the characters and mannerisms of the Wimseys. The Dowager Duchess seemed to me to be right on; Peter was still the same talkative, somewhat pedantic character; Bunter was still (a little too) diffident and insistent upon keeping up their relative stations in life. I found Harriet a little less perfect; for one thing, she didn't call Peter as "my Lord" in the original books except at a particularly intimate moment on her wedding night. The constant repetition of that irritated me. But that's a small quibble. The Wimsey's passed their time for the most part in town, in a much- reduced-in-size-of-staff Great House, living a somewhat simpler but still enviable life.

The descriptions of the Wimsey household, post war shortages, rationing, etc., were well handled.

The book made a perfect bathtub book, kept me engaged, took me back to visit old friends I thought were gone.

In the end, this is a very enjoyable journey back to old friends. Not something for the ages, but certainly something to enjoy at the moment.
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LibraryThing member readinggeek451
Lord Peter Wimsey's first case has ramifications far into the future. The story starts off all light-hearted piffle, but turns more and more serious.

Wimsey purists of my acquaintance did not approve of Paton Walsh's previous book. I, however, rather liked it, and I liked this one, too.
LibraryThing member KimMR
I loved how this one started out, but then it seemed that Paton Walsh lost her way towards the end. I didn't mind too much though, because Peter and Harriet were still fairly true to character and they were the reason I wanted to read the book anyway.
LibraryThing member SandyAMcPherson
This whole narrative was a real let down for me ~ obviously I went into it with some unrealized expectations. There were three flaws that could have been avoided by adroit handling of the theme, since the premise for the novel was sound and had promise.
Initially, despite my careful re-reading,
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confusion reigned in the family relationships. The list of characters in the front was rather useless since it was in order of appearance, which does not associate the various families, their siblings and their children. I made some family-tree notes to keep track of how all the people were related, a process I find highly irritating, because then I’m doing the writer’s job.

In the right hands, a backstory method can be very effective where characters relate past events in conversations years later with people who weren’t participants. Walsh overdid this technique and failed to make an interesting narrative. All the action and characterization was flattened out into a recital of two-dimensional episodes. This approach interferes with the reader being drawn into the story and relegates the plot to a character-dependent interpretation.
The third flaw was especially irritating: a complete stranger, Nandine Osmantus, shows up with an emerald and wants to compare it to the famous one about to be worn by Charlotte, the bride-to-be at a private engagement party. Aside from the improbability of an unauthenticated person being admitted on such an errand, especially at such a time in a private house, there was never any effort to justify such action, since the jewel was not for sale under any circumstance. Of course this scenario was to set up the original theft, but it was so poorly-executed that I just lost patience.
Ultimately, there were some interesting twists, especially in later years. But the novel had lost its potential for impact by then and the conversational approach diluted the action.
I wonder if I've moved beyond Sayer's way of writing or if this was more particularly Walsh’s style? I've only the dimmest memories now (30+ years later) of DLS’s writing style. I remember liking the Peter Wimsey character at the time, but in Walsh's book, he seems so ineffectual. My rating in this instance is particularly reflective of my personal bias, something I usually manage to avoid.
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LibraryThing member adpaton
Lord Peter Wimsey is a Golden Age gentleman sleuth who has not stood the test of time as well as Hercules Poirot or Jane Marple: originally created by the donnish Dorothy Sayers, he has been rediscovered by Jill Paton Walsh in a series of pastiches, remaining true to the original but more readable.
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The Attenbury Emeralds is the third and, by all accounts, the best: it starts with a country house weekend, goes on to a cursed jewel, a serial killer, and a fabulously rich Maharajah. Post War London, family tragedy - and family secrets with a hefty dash of snobbism - add to the richness of the mix.

Sayers, a clever but somewhat opinionatedly limited Anglo-Catholic blue stocking, was a product of her time with all the racial and anti-semitic and sexual biases worn on her sleeve: Paton Walsh avoids all this and portrays an almost anachronistically egalitarian and open-minded family.

Dorothy Sayers was accused of having crated a man she could love in the character of Wimsey, and then promptly falling in love with him. This Wimsey is better than the original but I find him unexciting: his accession to the Dukedom took me by surprise and it will be intrsting to see how Harriet - a middle class writer of detective stories and a bit of a Red - takes to being called 'Your Grace'. Sheer escapism but a grand read!
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LibraryThing member ChrisSterry
I found this a frustrating book. The story telling format at the beginning seemed a little forced, but I enjoyed the way in which the book filled out for us some areas Lord Peter’s past, especially the fire and his inheritance of the Dukedom. The changing relationship of Master from the 20s to the
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50s is interestingly explored, though not always entirely convincing. Mrs Bunter and Peter seem entirely too pally with the Ducal entourage. I must confess, however, that by the end of the book I was losing the will to live with the good old Attenbury emeralds. I actually ceased to care how many emeralds there were and who had which one when and for how long. The complexity of this plot, spread over more than thirty years surpassed my level of interest. Perhaps a helpful ‘spoiler’ flow chart would have helped. Certainly without the dramatis personae at the beginning I would not have coped at all. Also a picture of the three inscriptions, accompanied by translation, would have been useful. A Curate’s egg of a book. Very enjoyable and frustrating in equal measures. I’m still glad I read it though!
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LibraryThing member Athenable
Splendidly entertaining, even for those of us who've never read any of the Lord Peter Wimsey books. Now I'm very interested in reading the originals.

I won my copy through First Reads.
LibraryThing member wdwilson3
Heavy on domestic developments, light on mystery substance. Faithful to Sayers' style, but I doubt if she would have countenanced as many adoring looks.
LibraryThing member leslie.98
Really more like 2.5* rounded up...

While it was nice to spend some time again with Lord Peter, Bunter & family, I didn't feel like Walsh quite got the nuances of how Peter & Harriet talked.
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