Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers with guest ZJ Czupor, amazing second episode!

Tea, Tonic & Toxin is a history of mystery book club and podcast. We’re reading the best mysteries ever written, as well as interviewing some of the world’s best contemporary mystery and thriller writers.

In Gaudy Night, Harriet Vane returns to her alma mater, Oxford, only to find the tranquil setting disturbed by a series of unsettling incidents. Published in 1935, it’s considered by some to be the first feminist mystery novel, and it’s a prime example of Dorothy L. Sayers’ elegant prose, complex characterization, and intricate, emotionally charged storytelling.

Guest ZJ Czupor (Zoltan James) joins Sarah and Carolyn in a delightful discussion. 

Zoltan James is the pen name of ZJ Czupor. He writes mysteries, thrillers, and the occasional poem, and is proud to be represented by Terrie Wolf, founder and owner of AKA Literary Management.

His monthly column ON TOUR WITH DEAD WRITERS features vignettes about famous mystery writers and is available exclusively on Rogue Women Writers blog. Check it out here.
zjames.substack.com

Buy the book  here!

We chose Gaudy Night as one of our “history of mystery” book reads. Let’s discuss why … and make a case for having chosen the other.

For instance, Gaudy Night shows up on several lists of important books. Written by a woman, with a woman acting as detective, at a critical historical juncture, AND this is a huge departure for Sayers, with A LOT of internal monologue for Vane, the detective. It feels very autobiographical in many ways.

Gaudy Night pushes the mystery genre in the direction of philosophical treatise, asking questions about duty and where our ultimate loyalty lies. It’s a social commentary, specifically on the question of prospects for women who are smart and would like both a career and family.

A Hearkening Back to College Days / Love Letter to Oxford

John Donne (quoted in the book): “The university is a paradise, rivers of knowledge are there, arts and sciences flow from thence. Council tables are Horti conclusi, (as it is said in the Canticles) Gardens that are walled in, and they are fontes signati, wells that are sealed up; bottomless depths of unsearchable counsels there.”

We get a picture of Oxford life, with all its traditions and habits. Oxford itself becomes a character. Harriet wants to recapture the love that she had for Shrewsbury while she was there. She seems to want to reclaim her student experience. But what is it about that student experience that resonates for her (and for Carolyn) so deeply?

Shrewsbury is an oasis/retreat where she can detach from the day-to-day world and reflect (or meditatively not reflect). It’s a civilized safe haven where order (normally) reigns.

(Warden) ‘Probably you are not specially interested in all this question of women’s education.’

(Wimsey) ‘Is it still a question? It ought not to be. I hope you are not going to ask me whether I approve of women’s doing this and that.’

‘Why not?’

‘You should not imply that I have any right either

Carolyn Daughters
Brand therapy. Persuasive writing courses. Tell the best story possible.

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Transcript

Sarah Harrison: 0:20

Sarah, welcome to tea, tonic and toxin, a book club and podcast for anyone who wants to explore the best mysteries and thrillers ever written. I'm your host. Sarah Harrison

Carolyn Daughters: 0:35

and I'm your host. Carolyn daughters, pour yourself a cup of tea, a gin and tonic, but not a toxin, and join us on a journey through 19th and 20th century mysteries and thrillers, every one of them a game changer.

Sarah Harrison: 0:54

Carolyn, Sarah, I'm really excited about our episode today. I'm

Carolyn Daughters: 0:59

always excited about our episodes,

Sarah Harrison: 1:01

but before we jump in to our exciting episode, we have an even more exciting sponsor. It's Carolyn daughters. Carolyn runs game changing corporate brand therapy workshops, teaches Online Marketing Boot Camp courses and leads persuasive writing workshops. Carolyn empowers startups, small businesses, enterprise organizations and government agencies to win hearts, minds, deals and dollars. You can learn more at Carolyn daughters.com Carolyn, we have our guest zj, back again.

Carolyn Daughters: 1:43

Our guest, zj is back again. I'm very excited about that. We're going to talk about gaudy night with them, with zj and gaudy night by Dorothy Sayers, but before we get too deep, we're gonna we have a special listen. We have a listener. Our listener, as John said, from Selden,

Sarah Harrison: 2:02

New York. Congratulations, John. Yes,

Carolyn Daughters: 2:05

he actually won a copy of The Maltese Falcon and one of our little online Oh, that's

Sarah Harrison: 2:11

true. Terrific. We should put a sticker in there.

Carolyn Daughters: 2:15

Well, he already has the book, so he's acknowledged receipt of the book, so I need to now mail him a sticker that's on me, and I will take care of that. But awesome. He did what we want everyone to do. He's engaging on social media. We are on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. You can comment on any of those pages. Certainly follow us on them, or you can just write us from our website. We've got tons of contact links and a contact page on the site.

Sarah Harrison: 2:45

We have so many things. You can actually comment on Spotify now I put polls up there. You can comment on the YouTube clips we put up. You can reach us in so many ways. Please do it. Please

Carolyn Daughters: 2:58

do it. Yeah, so Sarah, tell us some more about our guest.

Sarah Harrison: 3:03

Yes, I am excited. If you have not listened to the last episode, or if it's been a couple of weeks, I want you to remember our guest, zj zuppoor. Zoltan James is the pin name of zj zuppoor. He writes mysteries, thrillers and the occasional poem, actually, a whole bunch of Haiku poems, right? And is proud to be represented by Terry Wolf, founder and owner of aka literary management. His monthly column on tour with dead writers features Vin Goetz about famous mystery writers, and is available exclusively on Rogue women writers blog. And we will put the link to that in the show notes. Welcome CJ,

Z.J. Czupor: 3:43

thank you. Pleasure to be here.

Carolyn Daughters: 3:45

Is it still on that blog or have because your some of your content, I think, is now being reserved as sort of a yeah,

Z.J. Czupor: 3:55

in preparation for publication, but yes, on tour with dead writers is alive on the blog, and we give, I give clues every month, usually picking a location where the author may have done something nice, and see if the readers can guess who it is. Oh, that's cool. And then they and then they can guess and have a chance to win a free book from one of the thriller writers. Oh, that's

Sarah Harrison: 4:24

very cool.

Carolyn Daughters: 4:26

Well, this episode is our second episode on Goody night by Dorothy L Sayers. It's the third classic mystery to feature Harriet vane companion salute to the dashing, perennially popular private investigator, Lord Peter Wimsey. It's a lot of letter P's there. It's very difficult from written by the writer, widely considered the greatest mystery novelist of the Golden Age, Dorothy L Sayers, so when Harriet vane attends her Oxford reunion. Now it is the gaudy, the Prim, academic setting is. Is haunted by a rash of bizarre pranks, scrawled obscenities, burnt effigies and poison pen letters, including one that says, ask your boyfriend with the title if he likes arsenic in his soup. Some of the notes threaten murder. All are perfectly ghastly, yet in spite of their scurrilous nature, all are perfectly worded, and Harriet finds herself as ensnared in a nightmare of romance and terror with only the tiniest shreds of clues to challenge her powers of detection and those of her Paramore Lord Peter whimsy and CJ, I think you're going to read a little bit

Sarah Harrison: 5:39

for us. We just picked a small selection, if you wouldn't mind reading it.

Z.J. Czupor: 5:43

Yeah, this is Miss divine speaking to the protagonist, Harriet Vane, and she says, detachment is a rare virtue, and very few people find it lovable, either in themselves or in others. If you ever find a person who likes you, in spite of it, still more because of it, that liking has very great value, because it is perfectly sincere, and because with that person, you will never need to be anything but sincere yourself.

Sarah Harrison: 6:17

Thanks. That's That's an interesting I feel like summary of Harriet's feelings, even though she didn't even say it.

Z.J. Czupor: 6:28

Yeah, I think that's a good example of the theme that Dorothy is trying to let us in on here in this novel.

Carolyn Daughters: 6:38

So this is the third novel that Harry and Harriet vane appears in. She's introduced in strong poison. I think the second book is,

Sarah Harrison: 6:53

I can't remember, that's the one we didn't read. We read strong poison.

Z.J. Czupor: 6:56

Poison was where she was introduced.

Carolyn Daughters: 6:58

I think it's have his carcass. Have his carcass is the second one I believe that she's in, and then the fourth one will be the honeymoon. What's the oh,

Z.J. Czupor: 7:11

that's the last Peter whimsy one with Busman.

Carolyn Daughters: 7:14

So I think she's in four of them. So years ago, Sarah, we read God as part of a book club that was not a podcast, and you had some strong feelings about Harriet. So where when you were first introduced to Harriet? Because this was the first Dorothy L Sayers you had read. It's also the first. It was the first one I've read what did you think of Harriet? And now that you've read whose body, and you have read the nine tailors, you've read strong poison, and you've come back a second time to go tonight, like, where are you now with Harriet?

Sarah Harrison: 7:55

Yeah, so, so overall, I think the book does well when you read all the other books that come before it Harriet. Still, I had a couple of points I was struggling with. I would say I struggled more with no context. I was like, What is her deal? Why is she so rude? What's wrong with Peter? Whimsy seems delightful, like she seems like a bit of a navel gazer. She's just kind of obsessed with this weird academic lifestyle, like I just I was not feeling her. What

Carolyn Daughters: 8:29

is a naval gazer? Oh, well, it's

Sarah Harrison: 8:31

a wonderful term

Carolyn Daughters: 8:34

I need to know as a self

Sarah Harrison: 8:35

absorbed person that's just obsessed with their own belly button, right? They're just always thinking about themselves and how they feel about everything. And I don't know, DJ, are you familiar with the term? Or my turns out, I first heard it, uh, when was it? I heard it in photojournalism school, and it was referring to art photographers, which had come from a fine arts background, and then went into photo. So I was like, yeah, that feels right. That lands, yeah. So I really struggled with her there. And after reading more of the books, I feel like I understand Harriet a lot better, but I still do struggle with a couple of things. And I'm wondering, CJ, your take on this. The first and foremost thing is her treatment of her old friend, Mary Stokes, and how, like, the whole book starts with Mary writes her a letter. And by the way, I'm gonna make this a quiz on the Spotify. I think do you say Gaudi goatee or gaudy

Carolyn Daughters: 9:38

or something, or another one or other option,

Sarah Harrison: 9:41

but so Mary invites her to the Gowdy. They were best friends in college, and now Mary's sick, possibly dying. Would love to see her again. And she gives Mary about five minutes before she just kind of insults her and avoids her for the rest of the party. It was. Is, to me, so cruel and also so inconsistent. Like Harriet spends so much time talking to people that actively annoy her, like this Schuster slat person were introduced this American woman, yeah, who does seem like a difficult pill to swallow, but, but why are you talking to her 100 times more, and then you talked to your former best friend just because you grew apart. She's like, well, I can't, I can't pretend to like someone just because they're sick. But how about you just be a decent human, right? So I really struggled with Harriet in that aspect, in the way she would sort of take on this aspect of boredom anytime she felt obliged to inquire after someone's family or children, and I was just like, Are you a human person? Like, what's going on with you that you can just be so to me, it comes across as very snobby, very self absorbed.

Z.J. Czupor: 10:51

Well, when I read that, I had the same impression at first, and then I thought, Harriet's entering into this gaudy reunion with her classmates. And from my reading of it, Harriet was insecure about her own career because she didn't go on to become a professor or teacher or an intellectual. She's writing mysteries, which was not highly regarded, although every now and then people say, Well, they're interested in her stories and where she comes up with ideas and that kind of thing. And so I think there's that insecurity within Harriet, and she sees her old friend who also didn't become an intellectual or work in high society. She's working on their farm. I believe, if I remember right.

Sarah Harrison: 11:46

I think that was a different one. Was that a different Mary's just sick. And then there's another woman who was like, super smart that, yeah,

Z.J. Czupor: 11:53

okay, I'm sorry, that's who I was confused. There's

Carolyn Daughters: 11:55

two women. And so Mary Harriet says she's one of these, has one of these small, summery brains that flower early and run to seed. Then the second woman, who's on the farm is described as a racehorse hitched to a plow.

Z.J. Czupor: 12:12

Okay, yes, okay, my mistake, no,

Carolyn Daughters: 12:15

no. I mean, so she's, she's seeing these women and sort of placing them. It feels like in this hierarchy, and she's got herself fitting somewhere in this hierarchy. So kind of what you're suggesting is maybe she's not at the top. It's not like she's marching and saying, I'm at the top of the hierarchy. She's feeling maybe she's not, but she's finding people below her on the hierarchy as well.

Z.J. Czupor: 12:36

I think that's a good, good description.

Sarah Harrison: 12:38

I like ZJ hire, kind of pointing to her own insecurity in that she's in the middle here, right? She's not an academic, and she's not a gardener, either, so, but she's still a snob.

Carolyn Daughters: 12:55

She's also not a wife or a mother. Yeah, she's

Sarah Harrison: 12:57

finding the levels and finding the people that she feels like are below her level, and she'd rather hobnob with the dean than just show some kindness to a potentially dying friend, which doesn't seem so hard.

Carolyn Daughters: 13:10

And that friend reached out to her and was so excited to have her coming. Like, why can't you just be nice? Phone it in a little bit.

Z.J. Czupor: 13:20

I think we have to remember that what Dorothy, the author, is doing is she's using Harriet to tell us about society. I hese are opinions that real people have. These are emotions people have. This is how people treat other people. And yes, I'm part of that, but part of that I don't like either,

Sarah Harrison: 13:41

yeah, this, that's an interesting point. When you take a character like Harriet Vane, who is partly autobiographical of the author, just to kind of know where the author ends and where the character begins. Yeah?

Z.J. Czupor: 13:56

Well, that's a tough one. I think it's probably different for every author or every character that they create. From what I've read, Dorothy admits that Harriet is part her, but not completely. So, you know, she's using her as a mouthpiece, I think, as a reflection on society.

Carolyn Daughters: 14:18

So do you both? You know, this is not a very intellectual question. Do you like Harriet?

Z.J. Czupor: 14:28

I like her later,

Carolyn Daughters: 14:30

later in this book, or in in in

Z.J. Czupor: 14:34

the series, okay, later in the series, okay, yeah, in this, in this book, I think she's, as you were saying, Sarah, she's kind of in between trying to figure out where she fits in all this. Yeah. She's not a real lovable character, really.

Sarah Harrison: 14:51

Yeah. Well, and here was a major difference, I felt like, in this book and all of other Sarah's books, so at least all the ones I've read, we. Have very little insight into a character's thoughts and almost never into Peter's other than just a dip. And even in strong poison, we don't have insights into Harriet's. I liked her quite a bit in strong poison, because you're seeing her exterior and how she handles herself, andher voice and her interactions, I thought were all great, but here we're stuck inside her head for the whole book. And I thought she was hard for me to deal with, but at the same time, I thought, Well, is she unrealistic? Though? Yeah, maybe I'm a lot like this and and I can't say I love being stuck inside my own head, day in and day out.

Carolyn Daughters: 15:43

did you think then there was like a familiarity there where you were seeing certain things and saying, This hits a little too close to home, or

Sarah Harrison: 15:51

maybe upon reflection, right? So I think when our own maybe suboptimal thoughts pass into our minds, when we're judging someone's mode of attire or this or that, or thinking a critical thought, it comes in and out of our minds, and we're not critiquing our every thought, but when we have to read it, yeah, on a page, you can't really escape that. So you

Z.J. Czupor: 16:16

can't because this is how you're seeing the scenes in front of you through Harriet's eyes and her mind, and you don't have any other choice, basically. Now maybe that was a conscious decision that Dorothy made to write it in her point of view. I mean, she could have taken, you know, the omniscient point of view, and then we could have seen more thoughts and internal dialog from other characters, but we can't, yeah, so

Carolyn Daughters: 16:47

which is, I mean, even in the 30s, though, I think that omniscience is probably less common. So you're starting to channel a main voice or a main and

Z.J. Czupor: 16:57

it's Dorothy projecting her ideas, her her emotions, her experiences through Harriet. And so it's kind of like, it's kind of like watching a character in a movie that you don't like, yeah, and then you, you have to step back and say, Wait, this is a movie. This is an actor playing a character,and that actor is probably a really nice person, so then, okay, I can accept it. This is just a role they're playing.

Carolyn Daughters: 17:26

Or ask yourself that next question, which is, why don't I like them? So am I seeing so a lot of time people in books or movies that I don't like? You know, not always, but some of the time, if I take a step back, I'm like, they do things that remind me of myself, and I don't necessarily want to see myself reflected back. I don't want that mirror held up. I'm like, put the mirror down. Maybe

Sarah Harrison: 17:48

the parts of yourself you're you're less excited about. I think Carolyn, you mentioned you identified with Harry in a few ways.

Carolyn Daughters: 17:55

I do so I mean, a lot of the thoughts that are running through her head, she's questioning things, and she's, you know, feeling so she's, she's coming to Oxford for the first time since she finished the studies, and she's apprehensive. And at one point on her second trip back, she's counting down the minute. She's like, Oh, I've still got 20 minutes of peace, 10 minutes now. And so I can identify with that. I've had, had times where I'm like, be in the moment. Carolyn, right now, everything's fine. And yes, you're going to get to whatever this thing is that you're sort of dreading, or you get there and you're now in the room and you're not sure how you're going to be received, or if you're going to be received at all. And you know, I've felt that apprehension, that she feels she goes a step further. So she's not very kind in her own mind toward Mary, and even snaps at her at one point. And then at the very end, it's, you know, we're four pages from the end. She and Lord Peter whimsey are at this concert, and this really bothered me. So Harriet was musician enough to respect this aloofness, you know Lord Peter whimsey's aloofness. She knew well enough that the ecstatic Rapture on the face of the man opposite meant only that he was hoping to be thought musical, and that the elderly lady across over the way, waving her fingers to the beat, was a musical moron. She knew enough herself to read the sounds a little with her brains, you know, unwinding the twining chains of melody, link by link. And Peter could hear the whole intricate pattern, every part separately and simultaneously. And she goes on and on, rap. Sing, poetic, you know, you know, poetic about Lord Peter whimsy, but looking at random people in the room and drawing these judgments about them. And I just thought this seems so petty, like, Why is she so why is she being so petty? And why is Sayers ending with this? Pettiness it. It basically says she and Peter are outside of even so. So most people are not at this musical concert, right? This is a small subset of the population, and even among that subset of the population, she and Peter are special. And I just thought it bothered me. I'm like, don't end it this way.

Sarah Harrison: 20:23

On the pettiness against strangers I can I can sympathize with more than what I consider cruelty to friends. So you have the Mary Stokes, and she was even pretty rude to Peter's friend, Freddie. And I know I'm gonna butcher his last name like Arbuthnot. Arbuthnot, yeah, who we see in almost all of the books show up, and he is like a little bit of a ding dong, but he's wildly helpful, and he adores he's not just a friend of Peter. Peter's his best friend. He made Peter his best man at his wedding. He winds up marrying into the levy family, which I thought was so cool, from whose body the very first book, and she's just like, I don't know why they're friends. I don't know why Peter's friends with the sting Dong and

Carolyn Daughters: 21:09

this moron. And I was just like, you are

Sarah Harrison: 21:11

so awful about friends like you don't understand friends, they work. So that probably bothered me more than just sort of the casual pettiness to strangers, it felt

Carolyn Daughters: 21:21

like to me that she doesn't have a whole lot of grace. And sometimes I feel like I don't have as much grace as I would like. And so when I see that reflected but amped up, it really just it. It bothered. It bothered me, maybe more than it should have, but I mean, Agatha Christie also wrote something about Harriet and saying he, you know, Lord Peter whimsey has this lengthy courtship with this tiresome young woman called Harriet, you know, and so I think readers Were, and certainly are divided on Harriet, where she's either, you know, this is a feminist novel, and we, we really get this voice and this character and this philosophy, and it's, it's interesting, and we like her, or the opposite, where we're like, oh, Harriet, like, I don't know, can't,

Z.J. Czupor: 22:20

like, Get a life? Huh?

Unknown: 22:23

Yeah, yeah, she's

Z.J. Czupor: 22:24

an interesting Harriet is an interesting character, no doubt. And I think, you know, I'm projecting here, because I don't know what was in Dorothy's mind, but I can only surmise that she was trying to give us a picture of this couple, where you've got this erudite, successful man and this woman who's grappling with who she is and bringing them together at The very end, where she finally will accept his proposal. And juxtaposing that conflict and that confusion with, gee, there's nice music going on. People are doing these things over here and just kind of acting normal. Yeah, so it's hard to say what was in Dorothy's mind there, but I think she was driving towards some kind of a ending that would be acceptable. Yeah,

Sarah Harrison: 23:35

I like your perspective there. Zj, and I think that's what made me a little more sympathetic to Harriet is we talked about her jewel Perot, and how he's kind of always the same static character. And so when I first read this book, I was just like, Who is this character? This Harriet vane is intolerable. I'm glad I'm not her friend. She would just throw me under the bus for no reason, but from seeing it in the context of the longer story arc, I feel like, actually, I'm seeing a woman who's trying to unravel her own baggage, and she's having a hard time doing it, a woman who's like, kind of been overcome by shame and scandal, and it's very inwardly focused, and doesn't know How to evaluate the things and people around her. And so it's it's not a static character, and she's not, you know, who she is at one moment, isn't who she necessarily is at the next moment

Carolyn Daughters: 24:30

she see she seemed like this binary choice, right? Like I can be this writer and independent and make my own way in the world. She made four times what her fiance boys had made Philip boys. Or she can, in her mind, be married with children, but she sees, does not see these as options that can be combined into one package. Or she's trying to figure it out in this book, is this something where I can have. Uh, you know, intellect and heart. Can Can these two things be combined?

Sarah Harrison: 25:06

CJ, I don't know if you know too much about the moment in time, but it actually seems like that was very much the choice at the time. All of the professors are single and live at the college,

Z.J. Czupor: 25:18

right? Yeah, I think Harriet is struggling to be who she is, and she she wants to be Peter's equal as a detective, even though she admits that he's he's better, but she kind of has this idea, I'm just as good, although she doesn't have the notoriety yet. She wants to be a successful writer, and she is, in many ways, but in her own mind, she's not there yet, and that raises the question, did Dorothy struggle with these same questions we're talking about now, or did Dorothy really see that character arc down the road, when, when they get married, they they're happy, they have kids and blah, blah, blah, you know, or did that involve in Dorothy's mind over the years?

Carolyn Daughters: 26:10

Was she grappling with these same questions with the characters that Harriet herself is grappling with through Goody night? Okay, yeah,

Z.J. Czupor: 26:20

could very well be because she grabbed, grappled with some of that in her subsequent marriage,

Carolyn Daughters: 26:28

she's seen these women coming back to this celebration, this where everybody starts the book, and several of them have husbands and children, and in Harriet vane's mind, their intellects have basically gone on vacation or done and then Sarah, like you mentioned, there's all these female dawns who are single and, you know, have immersed themselves in this academic life. And so there, there are two choices potentially, and she's saying she's having trouble envisioning this bridge between the two, which arguably, she's actually building that bridge with Peter, maybe in the previous books, but certainly in this book, they're both evolving to a place where they're, you know, he even at the outset, When he first meets everybody at the there's the the senior common room, the SCR and he's saying, you know, this is sort of a sanctuary Oxford. We don't have these dilemmas here about men and women and careers. And of course, you know, he just, he writes it off as an issue because of the haven where they happen to be located. So it's like, this is this? It's not a microcosm of the world. It's actually this exception from the world, this space where they are. That's correct. So is, is this book a mystery? Is it? Is I want to hear what you both think. I mean, is it? Is it a love story? Is it a philosophical treatise? Is it a feminist manifesto? Is it a mystery? Some of the criticism from Julian Simmons and George Orwell, you know, Julian Simmons says it's the book is long winded and ludicrous, ludicrously hard word to say snobbish. And George Orwell says slickness in writing is blinded readers to the fact that Dorothy L Sayers stories considered detective stories are very bad ones. So, I mean, tell tell me, like when you read this, is this a detective story?

Z.J. Czupor: 28:36

I didn't think so, because there was no no no, murder. You know, no one was harmed, so to speak.

Sarah Harrison: 28:45

A lot of vandalism, no,

Z.J. Czupor: 28:47

but it's a mystery. In the respect that you're trying to figure out who sent these doggone notes, you know, who's behind this and why, right? And so in that respect, I would say it's a mystery. And so that leaves us, the readers, trying to figure this out, along with Harriet, as we would in any typical murder mystery, we're trying to figure it out with the detective or the amateur Sleuth. So I'm just arguing both sides.

Carolyn Daughters: 29:22

That makes the book complex. It's good. So Sarah, is it a detective novel?

Sarah Harrison: 29:27

I I leaned on the side of Yes, so, but it's definitely more, and I think that's where we get. Sarah's being this long lasting. You know, what were they? Queens of queens of crime, queens of crime. I was like, what the queen of what

Z.J. Czupor: 29:50

the Dairy Queens of crime.

Sarah Harrison: 29:52

This long, lasting queen of crime, still read today, largely considered a master in so many ways. Is because, sure, there's a mystery there. And to me, I'll be honest, it was an annoying mystery. The first time I read it, I was like, could somebody die?

Carolyn Daughters: 30:10

Did I miss the murder? The young woman almost

Sarah Harrison: 30:12

committed suicide? I was like, Oh, finally, a death. Where's the blood? She's fine, and she's also so it was kind of annoying. And since then, there was nobody dying. And I'll throw this aspect out there. Well before I do that, I would say she was writing so much more, because there was a lot of this cultural juxtaposition, male versus female, high class versus low class, you know, and a lot of married versus unmarried, academia versus chill. And there was a lot of just sort of set up opposites involved here that address so many cultural issues at this time period in the context of a mystery. And so that's what I think she's considered much more literary than other mystery writers, yeah,

Carolyn Daughters: 31:02

it's very literary. It's, she's a, she's an excellent writer. I think somebody be hard pressed to read one of her books and say, yeah, she's all right, like she, I think she's a, she's a great writer. Is she a mystery writer? Well, in this book, it gets, it gets confusing a little bit.

Sarah Harrison: 31:19

Oh, and that was the other thing I was just say that DRO me bananas, and I'm interested how you guys felt about it. But one of the overarching themes that I could not sympathize with was, but we mustn't create a scandal. We must preserve Oxford's face at all costs. And everybody was like, oh, yeah, definitely, yeah, for the sake of, you know, Oxford, for the sake of womankind, for the sake of women's education and the movement, we must not allow there to be a scandal, and by doing so, you know, I think almost inarguably, they made things worse, sure.

Z.J. Czupor: 31:56

Well, just juxtapose that with what we see happening in the world today. There's so many institutions where we read about scandals and they want to put it under the rug, even, even at a time when institutions and people talking about, we're all about transparency, we're not so a lot of those issues that we saw in the 1930s are repeating, yeah, if you look at that. And I think, you know, Dorothy was, was really smart about, in many ways, being satirical about the times that she was observing with height, with academia and so on. But at the same time, she was reflecting back the social turmoil that was happening with the change of more freedom for women was starting to starting to open up, and so she was using conflict to help us try to understand that and how people were arguing both sides of that, that point in this novel.

Sarah Harrison: 32:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was, I was a little surprised how on board everyone was was saving face and the necessity of it.

Z.J. Czupor: 33:07

Well, that's, that's the British way.

Sarah Harrison: 33:10

Maybe it is a cultural thing that us Americans, or myself as an American, can't fully understand. But, um, yeah, it's not until I think it was Newland. Was her name, the young woman that tried to commit suicide, yeah, and because, and I just felt it was because the senior common room didn't want everyone to know that they were, in fact, the suspects, yeah, they kind of kept it from the students. Meanwhile, this poor girl had received like, 30 letters from the poison pin, and had no idea of the true situation, and because they hid that from her, she became suicidal. So they made it worse. Like, yeah, they made it they made it worse.

Carolyn Daughters: 33:49

So like, let's talk about this university setting. So rarely in this book are we outside of Oxford. We're on the Oxford campus for almost the entirety of the story, which you know, as I've argued, is not necessarily a microcosm of the world, but it's this whole other animal. It's this. It's this magical place where you know this. It's this cloistered place where all of these single, unmarried, you know, no children. Female dons can have intellectual conversations at every meal. They sit at table together, and they have conversations far and beyond anything you know, except for the two of you that I don't have with most people, the two of you are exceptions. But like, what about this space? I mean, this is a conscious decision, where Sayers said, I'm, I'm going to write a 500 page book, and I'm putting everybody at Oxford. So why, why is she doing this in your, in your mind, what? What is she getting out of this setting? Well,

Z.J. Czupor: 34:57

if I could start, um. Uh, many authors look at setting as also a character. And so if you think of Oxford and this milieu as a character, that character of Oxford has a certain tone, if you will, of eruditeness and hide a high literature. And, you know, this is, this is how we learn about the world here. And you know, you people out there, you have no idea, you know how the world works. So I think that setting puts us in into this notion that, oh, this is how people think here, yeah,

Carolyn Daughters: 35:46

yeah. So it's, you're, are you thinking that? Okay, you just sort of close the walls in a little bit and you're able to sort of put a lens or a focus on, yeah, okay, it's like

Z.J. Czupor: 35:57

a movie camera. Sure you focus in on Sarah? Yeah, yeah. And so now we're looking at Sarah's face and her body language and everything, and we're getting a perspective of how Sarah fits into this room and how she interacts with it.

Carolyn Daughters: 36:16

Would the conversation then be? Have been much harder outside of Oxford, where everybody's living their day in, day out, lives like Sarah. What do you think?

Sarah Harrison: 36:24

Yeah, I think I think zj is making a good point, that the the setting, if I'm understanding your point, is, is adding to the conflict that Harriet's trying to work through. I you know, I got the sense that she was really romanticizing, perhaps her time at Oxford. And the thing that I struggled with here, well, I can understand romanticizing your time in college or kind of the joy of learning was the continued reference by multiple characters that like, this is where real life happens. This is the real life. Not all that outside nonsense. And I'm like, Well, I feel it's a little the opposite. I think it's the opposite. I think this is where, you know, you sort of give into your whims, to delve into some obscure matter of history that no one is going to read in 30 years. And they seem to take the opposite tack, that, in fact, you were uncovering the reality that would be lasting. And I think, I think no, it's it's likely not. And from my perspective, the reality that's lasting is actually more about like people in your life and the relationships and the love that kind of gets carried down generationally from your existence. And I

Z.J. Czupor: 37:41

think that setting helps us focus our understanding of what Dorothy's trying to say about society today. You know, if we moved Harriet and some of the characters off to Fleet Street or someplace else in London, then we've got to look at those scenes. We've got to describe those scenes. And okay, then you ask the question, well, what does that mean to the story? What does that mean to the characters? And it's that becomes a divergent from what I want the reader to focus on.

Carolyn Daughters: 38:08

Yeah, like people are like, what am I an app for lunch today? Or, Hey, why? Why is this light so long I want to cross the stupid Street? Or, like, you have real life, have I've got to get back to work. I only have an hour from my lunch break. And so you get, you get outside of real life in this setting, and you have this luxury of time to focus on thoughts that I think are important thoughts and philosophy about life, that that Matt, you know this philosophy matters. But the luxury of being on this campus, in this sort of cloistered environment, this is not normal for most people. Most people don't have this opportunity to do this. Though, there is a part of me that just thinks I wouldn't mind doing this for a good solid month, or,

Sarah Harrison: 38:57

I don't know for sure, yeah, but it'd be more like a vacation unless, like, I'm getting to real life now.

Z.J. Czupor: 39:03

But it also heightens the suspense, because we know those gesturely notes are coming from somewhere around here, and so if they were coming from Parliament or Big Ben or something else, I mean, that would be a totally different story

Carolyn Daughters: 39:17

the greater world. So we know, we know it's a woman because of the access to the various buildings where the notes are discovered. We think it's a dawn. We think it's one of the women, you know, one of the senior common room women, right? Or we're kind of led down that path. But Sarah, I think you said on second reading, it's it's it's more clear to you that it's not one of the that it either it's not one of the dawns, or it could be, there could be a different solution to this puzzle.

Sarah Harrison: 39:49

Definitely, yes, although, before I get into that, I want to just pause a moment on the setting of Oxford, because she also dives into this theme as part of the setting and part of the conflict. Yeah, that was, I don't know, a little baffling to me, a little bit interesting, and I think, doesn't exist today, which is this whole sexual repression theme. And so we've used the word cloister, because all of these female professors, she's just, they're always calling them like these elderly virgins. There's this sexual repression. There's this environment where you get too many repressed individuals together, and maybe they went crazy, and that's part of the reason why they part in part why they suspect it's a dawn is it's it's a result of sexual oppression, and it was very difficult to get inside that theme, probably because that's not an environment that exists today. But I don't know what did you guys think about it, because it kept coming up over and over and over. She was like, Do I need a doctor? Do I need a psychologist? Or do I actually need a detective here? Because she was so invested, yeah, the psychology of it,

Carolyn Daughters: 41:01

yeah. No, I, I, I felt that also in some of the Dons. So I'm, here's another admission of mine. And I loved this book. I sometimes got lost in the character. So I said, Okay, this one's the dean and this one's the history professor, and facilitate between their name in their title, oh, and time and again, I'm like, Okay, let me go back to the start and figure out who this character is. So but some of them are really, like, adamant about their beliefs, and they strongly, you know, assert themselves. And so you could see sort of the angry female kind of trope here with some of them. And so maybe a psychologist was warranted. And at the end, they do suggest a psychologist is, in fact, warranted, because the woman guilty of the crimes, I mean, she seems very disordered to me, because this is just the strangest possible way to strike out. I felt.

Z.J. Czupor: 42:00

But what did you feel? Yeah, she really struck out with a very stressful, you know, very hurt way of expressing her anger. So I think that's why Dorothy set it up that way, that, you know, we have all these clues where we think it's these dawns, so and then we find out, Oh, it's not the person we thought

Carolyn Daughters: 42:26

it was. That bothered, bothered me, and I'd forgotten that from when I read it the first time. So when I learn and, you know, this second reading, I'm reminded that it's not one of the dawns. Do we want it? Yeah,

Sarah Harrison: 42:40

let's jump in there. Yeah. So, because I think that touches on, like the class theme, that's also really pretty it really

Carolyn Daughters: 42:46

bothered me the class. I felt that the classism was extremely problematic. Because I felt that Dorothy, Dorothy L Sayers and Harriet vane are making this argument for educated women of a certain middle or upper class, not for women more broadly, but for women who are the intellectual counterpart or counterpoint to the middle class, upper you know, wealthy men. And I'm waiting to find out which of these dawns is going to be exposed as the culprit, and then I'm reminded of what I read years ago, which is that, no, it's not one of the Dons, it's Annie who is a scout. A scout is a servant, or, you know, housekeeper, servant on the campus. And I thought, Oh no, I deliberately blocked this out. I know I did.

Sarah Harrison: 43:42

Although, like I said, I feel like it did become obvious on the second reading is you have, I feel like Miss Hilliard represented the very dawn stance, which is, she was right. So again, again, Sarah's is very masterful in her treatment of this. So Miss Hilliard gives this really angry speech about, why should married women be given privileges? Our work is just as important as having children, if not more so. And you know, at the end, Miss Lydgate is like, Oh, it's a shame she never got married like she couldn't she can see the root of the problem is more likely jealousy than belief in what she's actually saying, which is a very, still common theme. I mean, you'll see all the time on social media, folks getting mad that I'm a single person, and this person with kids wants me to give up my day off, like their kids are more important than my activities. Yeah, you know. And it's, you know, it's a valid upset, whether whatever source that comes from, so you have Miss Hilliard there, yeah, but the notes weren't. The notes were just like, clearly against academic women. So clearly, and there's only one character in the book that expresses that opinion out loud, and that's Annie, yeah. I mean, at one point, Harriet's even like, what horrible opinions. Why do you work here? And Annie's like, well, because I need the money, because my husband died. And she's like, Oh, so many joking.

Carolyn Daughters: 45:11

Of course, go back to your work. But like,

Sarah Harrison: 45:13

Annie expresses these opinions over and over again. She's the only one that does. She's the only one whose opinions match that of the poison pen, yeah? So it's yeah, I didn't think it was that obvious on the first shooting, but on the second, I was like, Oh yeah, I was that one.

Carolyn Daughters: 45:29

I had blocked out that detail, so I came to it fresh. And so I was like, Oh no, it's not and no, oh, come on. It's got to be one of the dawns. So I was very bothered by it, because I think it felt like a cop out to me. There are just there's this whole body of dawns to choose from. And instead, she chose the scout. Why? Why? Well,

Z.J. Czupor: 45:58

and yet the scout felt like her husband died because of the higher education, and that was evidence against his thesis.

Carolyn Daughters: 46:10

So what So Miss? I think it's Miss Devine discovers that he is a fraud, that some of his research is fraud. And if I have the characters wrong, it's because there were 4 million of them. And I get, I get confused, but I think it was Miss divine. And so, yes, because she has the same initials as Harriet, D Vane, and so it go. You know, this first initial note goes into the what is the word I'm looking for? They have the cloak or something that they're wearing. Oh yeah, they're gowns. They're gowns. They wear those everywhere they wear the gowns everywhere. And so would a man eventually not have figured out the fraud. So it feels like womanhood and female scholarship, these are the scapegoats. So it feels to me like Annie is not in her right mind, because not only then is she attacking Miss divine, but she starts broadening it. She can write 30 letters to this poor girl who attempts suicide. I mean, wow, it's just incredible. So

Sarah Harrison: 47:17

it feels, you know, as you say, that it makes me think that Annie's sort of making almost the fundamental mistake Harriet's making when you say, like, couldn't a man have figured it out? Well, sure, but he didn't. A woman did sure, you know. And so when Harriet brings up the scenarios of like, marriage really ruined that woman. You know, whimsy is the one that points out. Well, you know, it goes both ways. Sure, this word cuts both ways. But Harriet's not seeing that. She's talking to women, and she's seeing it as a gendered issue. And I think that's what Annie's doing too. She's seeing it as a gendered issue, okay?

Carolyn Daughters: 47:52

And a one eye open, one eye closed kind of thing, like she's only she's focused here.

Sarah Harrison: 47:57

I think it does indict a little bit the dawns, though, because their cruel behavior to her and Miss Hilliard in particular, like, kicked her out of her nice rooms, you know, and put her in, like, shared quarters with no regard, no regard whatsoever. Kids

Carolyn Daughters: 48:14

go to the Jukes house, right?

Sarah Harrison: 48:18

And they act like they're so sympathetic. I didn't see a lot of sympathy there. No, I didn't. It was like, You downgraded her in class. And, yeah, it could happen to any of them. You know, when you lose everything and you have to go out and get a job you didn't think you'd ever have to get Yeah, so I think it does in their classism and their cruelty to her and kind of driving her over the edge. That was my take on it. Do

Carolyn Daughters: 48:43

you sympathize with Annie?

Sarah Harrison: 48:45

Yeah?

Z.J. Czupor: 48:45

Oh yeah,

Unknown: 48:46

okay, do you I do?

Carolyn Daughters: 48:49

I do. I still think she's the psychologist was warranted, so I Sure, sure I don't. I don't feel like I unders. So I think this is part of my dilemma with Annie is the Dons. We spend a lot of time with the Dons, meal after meal after encounter after encounter, and Annie is interspersed periodically in a way that we are led down a path. It's one of the Dons. Oh no, at the end we're going to discover it's Annie. Well, I wanted to understand Annie better, at least as well as I understood many of the Dons, none of whom I understood as well as Harriet. So I'm not pretending we were in all of their heads or so forth, but I really felt that Annie is one dimensional as a character general, or maybe, you know, maybe periodically, more than one dimensional. But

Z.J. Czupor: 49:41

well, I think in her acting out, she's very multi dimensional. Pardon me, excuse me, because her acting out is saying I blame you for what you did to my husband. Yeah. But at the same time, what she did was not socially acceptable, and I was going to ask the two of you, do you think she committed a crime?

Carolyn Daughters: 50:10

Annie, yes, I do. I do in the sense that she broke into people's rooms and destroyed chess pieces and terrorized people bully. I mean, bullying is a serious thing in even in this, even in 2024, in this day and age, I think she bullied that girl to attempt to commit suicide. Do I think it's, you know, on the same level as you know, having committed a murder or something, I don't, I do not. I think Sarah, I think you kind of hit on it before, where this is a, to some degree, a cry for help, and she keeps elevating, you know, Annie keeps doing more and more and more, going further farther. Like, what if they had simply started exposing this? They might have shut this stuff down way before that, they did

Sarah Harrison: 51:12

well. And I wanted to go back to your point about Annie seeing one dimensionally, and I think that's because we're kind of seeing her through Harriet's somewhat classist gaze. When Harriet interacts with Annie, she kind of talks to her, and then she's kind of like, why is Annie talking so much? I really don't want to hear about her kids. And she's very dismissive, completely forgetting that, you know, however many years ago, Annie would have been her equal in society, the love the way in which she easily dismisses her, was one of the things that bothered me about Harriet and and not just because Annie would have been her equal, as though that's a valid classist thing to think, but it kind of makes it sting that much more for Annie, and that's what we don't get a great picture of her because she's constantly being ignored and dismissed by these dawns

Z.J. Czupor: 52:01

well, and I think part of that in in defense of Dorothy Sayers, I think she meant to keep her kind of in the background, because we didn't want to reveal her too early or give too many clues that this is the person we ought to really be looking at. Yeah,

Carolyn Daughters: 52:21

I think it's just her, her separation from most of the characters due to class, and then her being the culprit. And I thought, Oh, my goodness. Like, who's the natural person who did it? It's the washer woman, it's the housekeeper, it's the servant. I, you know, and we're each bringing our own take and issues. And so this is my own take, my own issues, and I'm bringing in into this story. But

Z.J. Czupor: 52:55

I think that's great, because it makes it that much richer. Yeah, it creates more questions and more ideas that we can bounce off of each other, that things we hadn't thought of before. So

Carolyn Daughters: 53:10

zj, do you have a secret you're going to share with us? Yeah,

Sarah Harrison: 53:14

oh my goodness. I can't believe this hour flew by. Oh my gosh. What is your secret?

Z.J. Czupor: 53:18

Actually, it's Dorothy. Dorothy's secret. So if you remember, in the last episode, we talked about Dorothy had an affair with this gentleman named John cormos, who who wanted a sexual relationship but not marriage. She did not want to use contraceptives because of her religious beliefs, and so they split almost very quickly. After that, she started a new relationship with a man by the name of Bill White, who really was beneath her class. He was a car salesman and a motorcycle aficionado. He was living upstairs in the same house that Dorothy was living in, and they started an affair, and they had a child together. Soon as Dorothy announced that she's pregnant, Bill wanted nothing to do with it, and he disappears. And then Dorothy found out that bill was already married, all right, had a wife and a child. Oh, no. So here's what's interesting, is that Bill's wife, when she found out about this, became supportive of Dorothy and moved in to where Dorothy was living so that Dorothy could leave and have her child. No and Dorothy decided to keep it. She entertained abortion, but she decided she wanted to keep it so a young boy was born, and she named him John Anthony, and gave him up to a cousin of hers of Dorothy. Cousin who took in children, and she knew that her son would be safe there, so Dorothy kept in touch with him, but the Son only knew her as cousin Dorothy. Oh, wow. Then when Dorothy got married later on to a gentleman named Fleming. Dorothy had hoped that they could take the child and move in okay with him, but he didn't want that. Her husband didn't want that. So the boy continued to be raised at this cousin's place, and it wasn't until after Dorothy died, did he know that was his mother. Wow.

Sarah Harrison: 55:43

No, that's so sad, yeah,

Z.J. Czupor: 55:45

and she had written a will, because the war was going on now, and she'd written a will that if she should die in bombing in London so on, that he would inherit her estate. Of course, she survived the war, and he still didn't know until after she passed away. Wow. So there is some of that that I think she's talking about in her novels, where, you know, we talk about the kids and where they're kept. You know, we're talking we talk about, she talks about these relationships and her hasn't her Harriet's hesitancy to get married. I think we knowing that background, you kind of get a better idea of maybe why she created Harriet and that kind of a character, yeah,

Sarah Harrison: 56:36

and why she created like the perfect man and Peter whimsy. She certainly didn't experience that. No way. She didn't know. Yeah, that's really sad. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, very sad.

Carolyn Daughters: 56:49

So before we wrap up, CJ, I want to hear more about what, what you're working on, about the groups that you're actively involved in, how we can find you all of this,

Sarah Harrison: 57:03

a bunch of associations. It sounds like

Z.J. Czupor: 57:05

yeah, I'm active in three groups, the Rocky Mountain chapter of Mystery Writers of America, and I was on the board for several years. I'm the immediate past president of Rocky Mountain fiction writers, and we have about 600 members in 30 some states and four countries, and we'll have our annual conference in September, and I'll be teaching a couple classes there, one on series fiction and one on how to be an author, on substack. And terms of what I'm doing, I've completed a novel, a mystery that my agent has and she's and tells me that it's being read by some houses great and also a nonfiction book, The Mystery minutes, based on on these authors. I've also completed two others, a thriller and another mystery that I've turned over to my agent, and I'm currently now releasing chapter by chapter, a new mystery on substack. Okay? Plus, I'm writing the monthly column on Rogue women writers on on two of his dead writers.

Sarah Harrison: 58:15

How do people find you on substack? It's

Z.J. Czupor: 58:17

Z james.substack.com, and you can subscribe for free, or you can do a paid membership, whatever, whatever you prefer. I'm happy to have free readers. I'm still just trying to grow the audience there, and you can comment, and I appreciate the comments, because they help me understand. Get some feedback, media feedback,

Sarah Harrison: 58:41

nice. We'll put all that in the show notes. We have you, yeah,

Carolyn Daughters: 58:43

we have a page on our website currently for you, but I'm going to add some of these other links. So I don't know that the links are comprehensive yet, but readers aren't readers, listeners and readers and readers, they will be. So I will update with substack, for example, on your page. Oh, thank

Z.J. Czupor: 59:03

you. The other thing I'm involved is international thriller writers, and this has been my third year of judging novels for the best novel. And I love doing it. We get hundreds of novels that we have to look through, but I view it as a learning experience, and get a feel for what people are writing about.

Sarah Harrison: 59:26

How do you read them all? Or do you read them all?

Z.J. Czupor: 59:29

You're not expected to read them all. You're expected to read them as long as they hold your interest. And if they don't hold your interest, go on to the next one, then

Sarah Harrison: 59:37

they didn't win. Kind

Z.J. Czupor: 59:40

of the way real people read, yeah,

Carolyn Daughters: 59:42

no, I like that. Yeah. They hold your interest, or they don't, exactly, yeah. Wonderful. Well, this

Z.J. Czupor: 59:50

has been a treat. Thank you for having me, and I enjoyed the conversation. It's been, I think, really interesting and caused me to think about some new things differently, about Dorothy Sayers. Oh,

Sarah Harrison: 1:00:00

we have two thanks so much for being on. You have such a great background on all of these writers. This

Carolyn Daughters: 1:00:05

conversation has been really fun, and like most of our conversations, we feel like we could do this all day, but our guests would flee the building. So we appreciate the two episodes that you've joined us on. And yeah, and

Z.J. Czupor: 1:00:20

thank you for the gin and tonic,

Carolyn Daughters: 1:00:23

tetonic and toxin, you know, yeah,

Z.J. Czupor: 1:00:25

perfect.

Carolyn Daughters: 1:00:26

Thank you.

Sarah Harrison: 1:00:27

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Carolyn Daughters: 1:00:50

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Sarah Harrison: 1:01:14

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Unknown: 1:01:42

You