Lord Peter Wimsey's elder brother the Duke of Denver is accused of murdering Dennis Cathcart. Cathcart was engaged to the Duke's sister Lady Mary, and was shot in the Duke's garden during the night. The Duke himself was discovered near the body, and it was his gun that was used in the murder. Wimsey and Bunter arrive from the continent and start to investigate the crime, hoping to save the Duke from the hangman's noose.
Armistice Day 1922 - and General Fentiman is found dead at the Bellona Club.
The General's sister apparently dies after him, but the conditions of the will are such that things would be different if she died before.
The General's body is exhumed and his death re-classified as murder.
Five people stand to benefit from the General's death.
A man working at the Pym's Publicity agency falls to his death. Lord Peter decides to go under cover at Pym's publicity to find out who killed Victor Dean.
Lord Peter attends a fancy dress party and learns the details of a drug ring.
Lord Peter discovers that Dean's girl friend has a drug habit and decides to take on a further alter ego - as his own cousin.
There are already two dead bodies and Lord Peter may soon be the third as it becomes clear that the gang smuggling drugs is using the advertising agency in a complex plan to deflect suspicion.
Lord Peter is invited to a wedding at the beginning of World War I, starting a chain of events that will lead to murder after the war is over.
20 years after his first visit, Lord Peter returns to the scene of a crime to find that it in fact hadn't been solved.
A mutilated body is dicovered hidden, but the coroner eclared it death by natural causes.
Nature - not Wimsey - sheds the final light on the mystery. Over the flooded Fenland the bells proclaim the death of a man...and the end of a crime.
Lord Peter and Bunter go for a fishing and painting holiday, but chance across a corpse.
Wimsey proves that the artist found dead was murdered.
Lord Peter decides which one of the six suspects must be the murderer.
Lord Peter reconstructs the crime and makes the murderer confess.
Harriet Vane, a crime writer, is charged with poisoning Philip Boyes, her former lover, with arsenic. The evidence against her seems overwhelming, but it is all circumstantial. The jury is divided and a new trial is ordered, to begin in four weeks' time. Wimsey visits Harriet, finds himself falling in love with her, and sets out to clear her name.
Mystery writer Harriet Vane, now cleared of murder at the Old Bailey, goes on a walking tour of the West Country and stumbles across a corpse.
The corpse on the rock - murder or suicide. Harriet and Lord Peter believe the evidence points to murder.
The police intensify their search for witnesses in the case of the murdered gigolo, found with his throat cut on a rock in Cornwall.
With the aid of an encoded letter found on the dead man's body, Lord Peter and Harriet solve the mystery.
Harriet Vane attends a reunion at her Oxford College and is asked by the Warden to investigate a series of poison pen notes that several members of staff have received. She takes up residence in the college and receives one of these notes herself. In the cloistered environment of the school, there is any number of possible suspects. In the absence of a motive however, it is difficult to determine if the culprit is a member of staff, a student or even if it is a man or a woman. When Lord Peter Wimsey visits the college - as much to see Harriet as for anything else - he agrees to assist in the investigation. What he finds is that one member of the staff had reason to seek vengeance.
Harriet decides to investigate the bizarre acts of violence that have erupted since her return to her old Oxford College, while Lord Peter is travelling in Europe for the goverment.
Lord Peter and Harriet solve the mystery and also decide to end their courtship.
