“What are you to do with the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains?” 

-Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night 

Dorothy L Sayers was one of the queens of crime in the golden age of detective fiction. She also wrote plays and essays on Christian topics and translated Dante’s Divine Comedy. Gaudy Night (1935) is often considered her best novel, combining a mystery at an Oxford women’s college, a love story, and an examination of issues impacting British interwar society—including the education of women and their proper role, the impact of class differences, and the lingering effects of World War I.  

Required reading: Gaudy Night, ISBN 0062648772, is available at the Calvin University campus store or online at Amazon and numerous other sites.  

Subject: literature  

Judith K Simonson is a retired attorney who read Golden Age detective fiction at her mother’s knee and has enjoyed studying Dorothy L Sayers’s life and work for many years.