*Crime, Spies & Sleaze: The Golden Age Of Detective Fiction was surely between the 1920s and the 1950s, and in this period several women dominated the genre. Agatha Christie remains the most famous, but several of her contemporaries produced equally absorbing work. Like all her fellow ‘Queens’, Dorothy L Sayers moved detective fiction away from pure puzzles and towards works of characterisation and depth. Between 1923 and 1939, Sayers wrote 11 novels featuring the upper-class amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. In 1930, she introduced a leading female character, Harriet Vane, the object of Wimsey’s love. Just one new Sayers in this week, but it’s a good one. From 1936, the classic Penguin paperback edition of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, one of Wimsey’s most memorable cases. It says something of the popularity of this novel that it was first published in 1928, then published in Penguin in 1935; by the time of this seventh impression, it was still only 1936. For those of you who collect Penguins by numbers, this is in fact Number 5, the fifth Penguin book. 
PICTURED: DOROTHY L SAYERS: THE UNPLEASANTNESS AT THE BELLONA CLUB Penguin 1936 7th UK PB thus GD £30 SOLD Lord Peter Wimsey. Some small stains and discolorations. Top cm of spine missing. Small spine split at bottom. Minor creasing bottom right corner.