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Gaudy Night

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Gaudy Night

By: Dorothy L Sayers
Narrated by: Jane McDowell
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Harriet Vane has never dared to return to her old Oxford college.
Now, despite her scandalous life, she has been summoned back . . .

At first she thinks her worst fears have been fulfilled, as she encounters
obscene graffiti, poison pen letters and a disgusting effigy when she
arrives at sedate Shrewsbury College for the 'Gaudy' celebrations.

But soon, Harriet realises that she is not the only target of this murderous
malice - and asks Lord Peter Wimsey to help.

'I admire her novels ... she has great fertility of invention, ingenuity and a
wonderful eye for detail' P. D. James

(P)2015 Hodder & Stoughton©1935 The Trustees of Anthony Fleming Crime Fiction Mystery Traditional Detectives
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If you could sum up Gaudy Night in three words, what would they be?

Oxford; romance; mystery

What did you like best about this story?

A Continuation of the ongoing story of Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, as well as a love-letter to Oxford and a detective story.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

in many, many, ways. I will avoid any book she is reading - she could spoil any book! She pauses irritatingly after every few words, at inappropriate places, she stresses the wrong words to make sense of a sentence, and she frequently mispronounces words - even homophones, such as 'bow' are pronounced incorrectly (revealing that she has little understanding of what she is reading. Why on earth was she recruited as a reader????

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

the book delighted me, but the reading made me scream with frustration and irritation.

Any additional comments?

PLEASE restore or re-commission new readings of the Sayers books, and don't let this woman loose on any books again.

Awful performance nearly spoils good book

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What did you like best about Gaudy Night? What did you like least?

Complex and engaging plot - one of Dorothy L. Sayer's Best. On the downside the narrator sounded like nothing so much as a satnav and seemed to have no idea what she was saying.

How could the performance have been better?

Another narrator.

Great story ruined by awful narration

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I have waited a long time for this book to be released I audio for at. In my humble opinion this is Miss Sayers at her very best. By why oh why didn't the get Edward Petherbridge for the narration. This is why I have marked down the performance.

Miss Sayers at her best - shame the narration wasn't that great

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This is one of Sayers' strongest books on Harriet Vane's perspective, and provide a satisfying step in her relationship with Peter Wimsey. The setting is ideal for a cosy mystery, with a finite set of participants, and the plot moves along at an excellent pace. From the writing side, the only thing letting it down is some fairly awful attitudes to class - I don't recall this book having the antisemitism or racism of some others in the series, though I might be blurring them together.

The narrator remains a disaster, though, mispronouncing character and place names, and at one point referring to a character as "Lord St. Peter", which...no. I hope someone commissions an unabridged narration of the series with basic research and a reader who paces sentences as if they're in English. If I wasn't craving full versions of the books to 're-read' on long commutes, the narration would prevent me from buying any more.

A good mystery and a terrible narrator

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The story itself is not too bad but the narrator is not at all good. It was hard to tell characters apart and it was so boring that it kept sending me to sleep!

not bad!

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