*This post is guest-authored by New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict.

Imagine this. You are a successful graduate of Oxford University with a burgeoning career as a mystery writer. Your series starring the aristocratic, blunt detective Lord Peter Wimsey and his sidekick, Harriet Vane, is starting to take off, and your popularity is nearing that of your good friend, Agatha Christie. Yet you can’t quite let loose and celebrate. Because it’s the 1930s, and you’ve been living a secret life.

How do you cope? You can’t tell anyone about the scandalous choices you’ve made and the very modern views you hold. No, that would lead to certain social ostracization and the plummeting of book sales, which you rely upon to stay afloat financially and keep your secrets hidden. But the stress of holding tight to your private existence mounts, and you need some way to release the strain.

If “you” are the legendary mystery author Dorothy Sayers, how do you manage this? You sneak the truth into the pages of your mysteries, hidden in plain sight for all to see but none to recognize. Take a gander at four of Dorothy Sayers’ best novels—all focused upon her alter ego character, the detective and mystery writer Harriet Vane—to see if pieces of Dorothy’s own life reveal themselves. I would venture to say that, as readers begin to piece together Harriet’s life, they might just start to unpuzzle Dorothy’s own secret existence.

And if that doesn’t do the trick, then take a peek at The Queens of Crime, where all becomes clear. See below for more on this Feb. 2025 release.

Dorothy Sayers’ best mystery & detective novels

Strong Poison (1930)
🎧 Audiobook

Readers are first introduced to the mystery writer Harriet Vane, in all places, when she’s in prison. Wrongfully charged with murdering her former live-in lover—the co-habitation itself considered an inexcusable scandal at the time—Harriet is faced with certain conviction when Lord Peter Wimsey appears at the eleventh hour. Soon, he delivers to Harriet more than his detective skills and support; he brings his romantic attention as well. While the real-life Dorothy never faced criminal charges from her own decision to live with a beau, she did suffer from societal judgment and heartbreak for this shocking choice, experiences that play out in the pages of Strong Poison.

Have His Carcase (1932)
🎧 Audiobook

The beachside murder at the core of this locked-room mystery comes to light when Harriet Vane stumbles across a body while on a vacation. Harriet begins an investigation into the seemingly unsolvable murder—made trickier after the body disappears—when Wimsey appears on the scene to assist. The two grow closer as they untangle the complicated murder, and while Harriet does have feelings for Wimsey, she continues to resist his proposals. Here, I cannot help but think that Dorothy projects onto Harriet her own initial ambivalence about committing to her own suitor, Mac Fleming, in the wake of her earlier romantic difficulties, some of them highly secret, and her concerns about relationship equality.

Gaudy Night (1936)
🎧 Audiobook

Harriet takes center stage in this nail-biting mystery set in a fictional version of Dorothy’s own Oxford women’s college. As she returns to campus for a celebration, or “gaudy,” she encounters a series of nefarious letters and dangerous pranks directed at the college’s faculty, who are also the suspects. Wimsey, of course, appears with his insights and his marriage proposals, which Harriet has fended off for years now, despite her very real feelings for the gentleman detective. As she explores whether it is possible to pursue meaningful, purpose-driven work while married—and whether Wimsey would ever try to squelch her independence—Gaudy Night transforms into more than a twisty, compelling tale. It becomes what many consider the first mystery to delve into feminist issues. Dorothy herself acknowledged that Gaudy Night sets out her views on work, life, and love, some of which may have been particularly relevant as her own marriage faced difficulties and her biggest secret threatened to ruin everything.

Busman's Honeymoon (1937)
🎧 Audiobook

While I am tempted to end with Dorothy’s masterpiece Gaudy Night, curiosity into Harriet and Whimsy’s future—set against a backdrop of very modern questions about the possibility of an equal marriage (Dorothy did, in fact, write the ironically titled “Are Women Human?” about women's role in society)—compels me to highlight Busman’s Honeymoon as well. When a murder occurs on their (spoiler alert) honeymoon, readers observe the way in which these two clever, self-reliant people come together in marriage and work, holding close their convictions and their mutual respect. I can’t help but think this reflects Dorothy’s view of the ideal marriage, one for she which longed but never quite achieved, with her secret casting a pall.

More about The Queens of Crime (2025)

London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club.

Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment.

May Daniels, a young English nurse on an excursion to France with her friend, seemed to vanish into thin air as they prepared to board a ferry home. Months later, her body is found in the nearby woods. The murder has all the hallmarks of a locked room mystery for which these authors are famous: how did her killer manage to sneak her body out of a crowded train station without anyone noticing? If, as the police believe, the cause of death is manual strangulation, why is there is an extraordinary amount of blood at the crime scene? What is the meaning of a heartbreaking secret letter seeming to implicate an unnamed paramour?

Determined to solve the highly publicized murder, the Queens of Crime embark on their own investigation, discovering they’re stronger together. But soon the killer targets Dorothy Sayers herself, threatening to expose a dark secret in her past that she would do anything to keep hidden.

Inspired by a true story in Sayers' own life, Benedict brings to life the lengths to which five talented women writers will go to be taken seriously in the male-dominated world of letters as they unpuzzle a mystery torn from the pages of their own novels.

Also available as an audiobook.

*Title availability may vary by library & region.