Rating: 
Summary: Two Thumbs Up!
Review: I'm a big fan of Sayers and have sometimes found "continuations" by other authors to be a disappointment. Luckily, however, Jill Walsh does a *wonderful* job capturing the language and characters of those wonderful fictional friends, Lord Peter and Harriet. A satisfying read and well worth adding to your classic Brit mystery collection.
Rating:
Summary: powerful WW II amateur sleuth tale
Review: In 1940,the siren testing the warning system goes off in a remote English village. Except for the Methodists, everyone including Harriet Vane, better known as Lady Peter Wimsey, enter the cave used as the air raid shelter. After a long time, the siren finally ends signifying all clear. Everyone leaves the cave only to find the corpse of a Land Girl, "Wicked" Wendy Percival, lying in the street.Knowing he is already shorthanded due to the war effort and her experience as a crime novelist, Superintendent Kirk asks Harriet to investigate the murder that is clearly not the work of a Nazi. He wants her to perform the role of her spouse Lord Peter, overseas on government work, to make inquiries and report back to him, but not take risks. Reluctantly Harriet begins her investigation starting with the other eight Land Girls, but quickly she finds reality much more complex and stranger than fiction. Using fictional letters that the late great Dorothy L. Sayers wrote in support of the English World war II efforts, Jill Paton Walsh paints a powerful amateur sleuth tale that fans of the Wimsey tales will enjoy and will appreciate the cleverness of the endeavor. The story line insures that the regulars remain true to their known personalities while WW II in a remote village is used to provide the background of a strong who-done-it. Still, this tale belongs to the cast especially Harriet who provides a fine time for series fans and historical mystery readers. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: Sayers fans will appreciate this excellent forgery!
Review: Jill Paton Walsh does a superior job of creating an intriguing mystery while maintaining the charm and appeal of the Wimseys, et al. I don't buy many books in hard back, but this one was worth it.
Rating: 
Summary: What happened to Roger?
Review: One specific criticism: Walsh seems to have mixed up the Wimsey children Roger and Paul: in Sayers' story Talboys, set after this book, Bredon is six, Roger is four, and Paul is only briefly mentioned and strongly implied to be the youngest. Then somehow in Presumption of Death, Harriet has a three-year-old Bredon and . . . Paul. Harriet introduces him as "her second son" and Roger seems to have been completely skipped. I really don't understand how Walsh could clearly have done so much research and mimicked Sayers style so skillfully, yet overlooked something as basic as keeping her characters straight.
Rating: 
Summary: Not quite up to the original but.....
Review: still an enjoyable visit with old friends.
It is the early days of WWII, Harriet Vane has evacuated her London household, plus her niece and nephew to Talboys, her country house. Lord Peter and Bunter are away on an assignment for the foreign office. Harriet is busy coping with the war time rationing of food and clothing as well as learning the subtle nuances of village life when she is asked to assist the village constable with a murder investigation.
Many of the characters introduced in Sayers original novels return, including the Wimsey clan and several of the villagers. Walsh has stayed true to the original characters but she is not Sayers. There are inconsistencies in the details of the family, (a 'missing' child, the wrong age for another) and the village residents no longer speak in dialects. There are also editing errors (the Ruddles are chapel one minute and church the next, names are changed, people are two places at once etc). Also Walsh's style is different than Sayers, not as detailed or as witty. The mystery is not quite as intricrately plotted as Sayers.
Despite these shortcomings it is still a worthly successor to the original series and a throughly enjoyable read.
Rating: 
Summary: A Pale Imitation Of The Real Thing
Review: The names are accurate, even, to some extent, the sense of place, but the characters are mere shadows of themselves and the dialogue jars. Sayers let dialogue reveal the emotion; she didn't add "said smilingly," "said miserably" etc. to every third line. Anachronisms that bothered me in "Thrones" persisted here (Harriet inviting social inferiors to use her first name - today, it shows friendliness and an egalitarian spirit - then, it just WASN'T DONE.) And I wholeheartedly agree about the very non-subtle references to episodes from the other novels - very un-Sayers -- and the replay of well-known quirks, etc. In general, neither this book nor Thrones, Dominations is nearly as FUNNY as the "real" Sayers novels. Compare Strong Poison's terrific scenes in which the hidden wills are found, for example. I admit Paton-Walsh can write ... I just wish she would write more like DLS. A final carp - what's with the large print? I felt like I was reading a book for a second-grader.
Rating:
Summary: A good read with a relatively simple plot
Review: The plot of A PRESUMPTION OF DEATH is relatively simple. The time is 1939 and England is at war. Lord Peter Wimsey is off doing his duty while his wife Harriet Vane --- mother, mystery writer and involved citizen --- has fled to the English countryside with her children and their cousins. After a practice air raid drill, a young woman of questionable virtue is found dead. Superintendent Kirk of the local constabulary calls upon Harriett to help solve the murder. Lord Peter usually undertakes this kind of investigation, but he is unavailable and a dead girl's killer must be found. "I don't know which way to turn, Lady Peter, and that's the truth," says Kirk, when he proposes that Harriet help him. She reluctantly agrees to step in: "It isn't easy ' [s]tanding in for Peter", but this is "' in various ways what I seem to be for, at the moment." That particular murder is the epicenter around which Jill Paton Walsh builds her tale. She uses the "Wimsey Papers", a collection of works that Dorothy L. Sayers had published in The Spectator in the 1930s and 1940s. These papers comprise a series of letters written by the Wimsey family to each other and to friends. They become the voices of the characters, both familiar and new, that Sayers wrote about. Walsh comments: "In A PRESUMPTION OF DEATH all I had to use were propaganda letters, and so I had a completely free hand with the plot." To recreate Harriet Vane in A PRESUMPTION OF DEATH, Walsh says, " ' [Sayers] didn't exactly promote Harriet, who is not, by any means, an idealized character. Just compare her with Peter. Look how grumpy she is, how bad-tempered, how sometimes cool she is. She's not beautiful, and has a hard, chilly-eyed view of life. And that's what gives her [a] convincing quality." She is bored with "just" being Lady Peter and, while she adores her children, she yearns for the freedom she had before motherhood and the war imposed their restrictions upon her. Readers and fans will have to decide for themselves how they feel about these issues, but the truth is they do not detract from an otherwise well-told story. Agatha Christie and many other writers kill off their central characters in order to preserve their place in the canon. Sayers did not do this and, clearly, she left the "Wimsey Papers" for someone to "keep alive" with her/his ideas. The challenge for Walsh is to decide whether or not she wants to "adopt" the Wimsey clan with all of their eccentricities, lordly ways, manners and humor, or if she will decide that two is enough. When asked if she would consider this proposition, she said, "I would be fascinated, but I would be increasingly careful. Each step you take away from an authentic piece of work the harder it's going to be to maintain authenticity and I would need to think really hard. I mean Lord Peter and Harriet are lovely fun, they're awfully entertaining to write about, and I can think of loads of books about them that I'd love to write --- that's not the problem. I would need to be sure I could do it well. And by well, I mean really consistent with Sayers's work." Jill Paton Walsh is a writer in her own right. She is the author of several children's books and six adult novels. She was invited to complete a Sayers manuscript (THRONES, DOMINATIONS): I "' had a lot of fun doing it" and she was applauded for her efforts. For this second book she had the "papers" to help bolster and frame her story. A PRESUMPTION OF DEATH is a good read. Fans will find that it is faithful to the personalities Dorothy L. Sayers created and the plot is one that certainly resembles the original Wimsey/Vane pattern. --- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum
Rating: 
Summary: Very much a letdown
Review: This book does not honor the Sayers canon. It is full of allusions to moments from other books, as if Walsh is trying to say "See? I read then and know them! Trust me, I'm a fan!" But Sayers hardly ever repeated herself. The book has more dialogue and less intelligent introspection and analysis than any Sayers book. The scene in which Harriet puts an exhausted Bunter to bed would NEVER happen that way; Harriet wouldn't violate the social contract. Bunter would never be that familar with Ruddle. Trapp is not likely to tolerate Ruddle. In a late scene, Bunter appears in two places at once. There is no attempt to use dialect or idiom to distinguish people from different backgrounds. Poorly written, and VERY poorly edited. Looks like a rush job. I hope she does not write another novel using Sayers' characters. It is a disservice to the fans.
Rating:
Summary: More detail needed
Review: This novel was not as rich in the Sayeresque detail as other Sayers/Wimsey books. Thrones Dominations had more of the detail that makes Lord Peter such a joy. But this book does cover the war years and many families were separated and the flavor of life was reduced. Lord Peter's absence during much of the book reduces that flavor. I missed the familiar interaction the characterizes other Wimsey novels. It is still appropriate to the period and a pretty good Lord Peter tail is still better than many other authors at their best. I hope another try will be made; perhaps to chronical the Wimsey family in the post war era.
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