Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers with guest ZJ Czupor, amazing second episode!

Episode Transcript
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Sarah Harrison (00:20):
Sarah, welcome to tea, tonic and toxin, a book
club and podcast for anyone whowants to explore the best
mysteries and thrillers everwritten. I'm your host. Sarah
Harrison

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and I'm your host. Carolyn daughters, pour
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thrillers, every one of them agame changer.

Carolyn, Sarah, I'm really excited about our
episode today. I'm

always excited about our episodes,

but before we jump in to our exciting episode,
we have an even more excitingsponsor. It's Carolyn daughters.
Carolyn runs game changingcorporate brand therapy
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(01:23):
startups, small businesses,enterprise organizations and
government agencies to winhearts, minds, deals and
dollars. You can learn more atCarolyn daughters.com Carolyn,
we have our guest zj, backagain.

Our guest, zj is back again. I'm very excited
about that. We're going to talkabout gaudy night with them,
with zj and gaudy night byDorothy Sayers, but before we
get too deep, we're gonna wehave a special listen. We have a
listener. Our listener, as Johnsaid, from Selden,

New York.
Congratulations, John. Yes,

he actually won a copy of The Maltese Falcon
and one of our little online Oh,that's

true. Terrific.
We should put a sticker inthere.

Well, he already has the book, so he's
acknowledged receipt of thebook, so I need to now mail him
a sticker that's on me, and Iwill take care of that. But
awesome. He did what we wanteveryone to do. He's engaging on
social media. We are onInstagram, Facebook, Twitter and
YouTube. You can comment on anyof those pages. Certainly follow

(02:38):
us on them, or you can justwrite us from our website. We've
got tons of contact links and acontact page on the site.

We have so many things. You can actually comment
on Spotify now I put polls upthere. You can comment on the
YouTube clips we put up. You canreach us in so many ways. Please
do it. Please

do it. Yeah, so Sarah, tell us some more
about our guest.

Yes, I am excited. If you have not
listened to the last episode, orif it's been a couple of weeks,
I want you to remember ourguest, zj zuppoor. Zoltan James
is the pin name of zj zuppoor.
He writes mysteries, thrillersand the occasional poem,
actually, a whole bunch of Haikupoems, right? And is proud to be
represented by Terry Wolf,founder and owner of aka

(03:26):
literary management. His monthlycolumn on tour with dead writers
features Vin Goetz about famousmystery writers, and is
available exclusively on Roguewomen writers blog. And we will
put the link to that in the shownotes. Welcome CJ,

Z.J. Czupor (03:43):
thank you. Pleasure to be here.

Is it still on that blog or have because
your some of your content, Ithink, is now being reserved as
sort of a yeah,

in preparation for publication, but yes, on tour
with dead writers is alive onthe blog, and we give, I give
clues every month, usuallypicking a location where the
author may have done somethingnice, and see if the readers can

(04:16):
guess who it is. Oh, that'scool. And then they and then
they can guess and have a chanceto win a free book from one of
the thriller writers. Oh, that's

very cool.

Well, this episode is our second episode on
Goody night by Dorothy L Sayers.
It's the third classic mysteryto feature Harriet vane
companion salute to the dashing,perennially popular private
investigator, Lord Peter Wimsey.
It's a lot of letter P's there.
It's very difficult from writtenby the writer, widely considered
the greatest mystery novelist ofthe Golden Age, Dorothy L

(04:49):
Sayers, so when Harriet vaneattends her Oxford reunion. Now
it is the gaudy, the Prim,academic setting is. Is haunted
by a rash of bizarre pranks,scrawled obscenities, burnt
effigies and poison pen letters,including one that says, ask
your boyfriend with the title ifhe likes arsenic in his soup.

(05:09):
Some of the notes threatenmurder. All are perfectly
ghastly, yet in spite of theirscurrilous nature, all are
perfectly worded, and Harrietfinds herself as ensnared in a
nightmare of romance and terrorwith only the tiniest shreds of
clues to challenge her powers ofdetection and those of her

(05:31):
Paramore Lord Peter whimsy andCJ, I think you're going to read
a little bit

for us. We just picked a small selection, if you
wouldn't mind reading it.

Yeah, this is Miss divine speaking to the
protagonist, Harriet Vane, andshe says, detachment is a rare
virtue, and very few people findit lovable, either in themselves
or in others. If you ever find aperson who likes you, in spite
of it, still more because of it,that liking has very great

(06:07):
value, because it is perfectlysincere, and because with that
person, you will never need tobe anything but sincere
yourself.

Thanks. That's That's an interesting I feel
like summary of Harriet'sfeelings,
even though she didn't even sayit.

Yeah, I think that's a good example of the
theme that Dorothy is trying tolet us in on here in this novel.

So this is the third novel that Harry and
Harriet vane appears in. She'sintroduced in strong poison. I
think the second book is,

I can't remember, that's the one we
didn't read. We read strongpoison.

Poison was where she was introduced.

I think it's have his carcass. Have his
carcass is the second one Ibelieve that she's in, and then
the fourth one will be thehoneymoon. What's the oh,

that's the last Peter whimsy one with Busman.

So I think she's in four of them. So years
ago, Sarah, we read God as partof a book club that was not a
podcast, and you had some strongfeelings about Harriet. So where
when you were first introducedto Harriet? Because this was the

(07:36):
first Dorothy L Sayers you hadread. It's also the first. It
was the first one I've read whatdid you think of Harriet? And
now that you've read whose body,and you have read the nine
tailors, you've read strongpoison, and you've come back a
second time to go tonight, like,where are you now with Harriet?

Yeah, so, so overall, I think the book does
well when you read all the otherbooks that come before it
Harriet. Still, I had a coupleof points I was struggling with.
I would say I struggled morewith no context. I was like,
What is her deal? Why is she sorude? What's wrong with Peter?

(08:15):
Whimsy seems delightful, likeshe seems like a bit of a navel
gazer. She's just kind ofobsessed with this weird
academic lifestyle, like I justI was not feeling her. What

is a naval gazer? Oh, well, it's

a wonderful term

I need to know as a self

absorbed person that's just obsessed with their
own belly button, right? They'rejust always thinking about
themselves and how they feelabout everything. And I don't
know, DJ, are you familiar withthe term? Or my turns out, I
first heard it, uh, when was it?
I heard it in photojournalismschool, and it was referring to
art photographers, which hadcome from a fine arts

(08:59):
background, and then went intophoto. So I was like, yeah, that
feels right. That lands, yeah.
So I really struggled with herthere. And after reading more of
the books, I feel like Iunderstand Harriet a lot better,
but I still do struggle with acouple of things. And I'm
wondering, CJ, your take onthis. The first and foremost

(09:22):
thing is her treatment of herold friend, Mary Stokes, and
how, like, the whole book startswith Mary writes her a letter.
And by the way, I'm gonna makethis a quiz on the Spotify. I
think do you say Gaudi goatee orgaudy

or something, or another one or other option,

but so Mary invites her to the Gowdy. They
were best friends in college,and now Mary's sick, possibly
dying. Would love to see heragain. And she gives Mary about
five minutes before she justkind of insults her and avoids
her for the rest of the party.
It was. Is, to me, so cruel andalso so inconsistent. Like

(10:03):
Harriet spends so much timetalking to people that actively
annoy her, like this Schusterslat person were introduced this
American woman, yeah, who doesseem like a difficult pill to
swallow, but, but why are youtalking to her 100 times more,
and then you talked to yourformer best friend just because
you grew apart. She's like,well, I can't, I can't pretend

(10:24):
to like someone just becausethey're sick. But how about you
just be a decent human, right?
So I really struggled withHarriet in that aspect, in the
way she would sort of take onthis aspect of boredom anytime
she felt obliged to inquireafter someone's family or
children, and I was just like,Are you a human person? Like,

(10:44):
what's going on with you thatyou can just be so to me, it
comes across as very snobby,very self absorbed.

Well, when I read that, I had the same impression
at first, and then I thought,Harriet's entering into this
gaudy reunion with herclassmates. And from my reading
of it, Harriet was insecureabout her own career because she

(11:15):
didn't go on to become aprofessor or teacher or an
intellectual. She's writingmysteries, which was not highly
regarded, although every now andthen people say, Well, they're
interested in her stories andwhere she comes up with ideas
and that kind of thing. And so Ithink there's that insecurity
within Harriet, and she sees herold friend who also didn't

(11:39):
become an intellectual or workin high society. She's working
on their farm. I believe, if Iremember right.

I think that was a different one. Was that a
different Mary's just sick. Andthen there's another woman who
was like, super smart that,yeah,

okay, I'm sorry, that's who I was confused.
There's

two women.
And so Mary Harriet says she'sone of these, has one of these
small, summery brains thatflower early and run to seed.
Then the second woman, who's onthe farm is described as a
racehorse hitched to a plow.

Okay, yes, okay, my mistake, no,

no. I mean, so she's, she's seeing these
women and sort of placing them.
It feels like in this hierarchy,and she's got herself fitting
somewhere in this hierarchy. Sokind of what you're suggesting
is maybe she's not at the top.
It's not like she's marching andsaying, I'm at the top of the
hierarchy. She's feeling maybeshe's not, but she's finding
people below her on thehierarchy as well.

I think that's a good, good description.

I like ZJ hire, kind of pointing to her own
insecurity in that she's in themiddle here, right? She's not an
academic, and she's not agardener, either, so, but she's
still a snob.

She's also not a wife or a mother. Yeah,
she's

finding the levels and finding the people
that she feels like are belowher level, and she'd rather
hobnob with the dean than justshow some kindness to a
potentially dying friend, whichdoesn't seem so hard.

And that friend reached out to her and
was so excited to have hercoming. Like, why can't you just
be nice? Phone it in a littlebit.

I think we have to remember that what Dorothy, the
author, is doing is she's usingHarriet to tell us about
society. I hese are opinionsthat real people have. These are
emotions people have. This ishow people treat other people.
And yes, I'm part of that, butpart of that I don't like
either,

yeah, this, that's an interesting point.
When you take a character likeHarriet Vane, who is partly
autobiographical of the author,just to kind of know where the
author ends and where thecharacter begins. Yeah?

Well, that's a tough one. I think it's probably
different for every author orevery character that they
create. From what I've read,Dorothy admits that Harriet is
part her, but not completely.
So, you know, she's using her asa mouthpiece, I think, as a
reflection on society.

So do you both? You know, this is not a
very intellectual question. Doyou like Harriet?

I like her later,

later in this book, or in in in

the series, okay, later in the series, okay, yeah,
in this, in this book, I thinkshe's, as you were saying,
Sarah, she's kind of in betweentrying to figure out where she
fits in all this. Yeah. She'snot a real lovable character,
really.

Yeah. Well, and here was a major difference, I
felt like, in this book and allof other Sarah's books, so at
least all the ones I've read,we. Have very little insight
into a character's thoughts andalmost never into Peter's other
than just a dip. And even instrong poison, we don't have

(15:11):
insights into Harriet's. I likedher quite a bit in strong
poison, because you're seeingher exterior and how she handles
herself, andher voice and herinteractions, I thought were all
great, but here we're stuckinside her head for the whole
book. And I thought she was hardfor me to deal with, but at the
same time, I thought, Well, isshe unrealistic? Though? Yeah,

(15:36):
maybe I'm a lot like this andand I can't say I love being
stuck inside my own head, day inand day out.

did you think then there was like a
familiarity there where you wereseeing certain things and
saying, This hits a little tooclose to home, or

maybe upon reflection, right? So I think
when our own maybe suboptimalthoughts pass into our minds,
when we're judging someone'smode of attire or this or that,
or thinking a critical thought,it comes in and out of our
minds, and we're not critiquingour every thought, but when we
have to read it, yeah, on apage, you can't really escape

(16:14):
that. So you

can't because this is how you're seeing the scenes
in front of you throughHarriet's eyes and her mind, and
you don't have any other choice,basically. Now maybe that was a
conscious decision that Dorothymade to write it in her point of
view. I mean, she could havetaken, you know, the omniscient

(16:38):
point of view, and then we couldhave seen more thoughts and
internal dialog from othercharacters, but we can't, yeah,
so

which is, I mean, even in the 30s, though, I
think that omniscience isprobably less common. So you're
starting to channel a main voiceor a main and

it's Dorothy projecting her ideas, her her
emotions, her experiencesthrough Harriet. And so it's
kind of like, it's kind of likewatching a character in a movie
that you don't like, yeah, andthen you, you have to step back
and say, Wait, this is a movie.
This is an actor playing acharacter,and that actor is

(17:18):
probably a really nice person,so then, okay, I can accept it.
This is just a role they'replaying.

Or ask yourself that next question,
which is, why don't I like them?
So am I seeing so a lot of timepeople in books or movies that I
don't like? You know, notalways, but some of the time, if
I take a step back, I'm like,they do things that remind me of
myself, and I don't necessarilywant to see myself reflected
back. I don't want that mirrorheld up. I'm like, put the
mirror down. Maybe

the parts of yourself you're you're less
excited about. I think Carolyn,you mentioned you identified
with Harry in a few ways.

I do so I mean, a lot of the thoughts that
are running through her head,she's questioning things, and
she's, you know, feeling soshe's, she's coming to Oxford
for the first time since shefinished the studies, and she's
apprehensive. And at one pointon her second trip back, she's
counting down the minute. She'slike, Oh, I've still got 20

(18:16):
minutes of peace, 10 minutesnow. And so I can identify with
that. I've had, had times whereI'm like, be in the moment.
Carolyn, right now, everything'sfine. And yes, you're going to
get to whatever this thing isthat you're sort of dreading, or
you get there and you're now inthe room and you're not sure how
you're going to be received, orif you're going to be received
at all. And you know, I've feltthat apprehension, that she

(18:40):
feels she goes a step further.
So she's not very kind in herown mind toward Mary, and even
snaps at her at one point. Andthen at the very end, it's, you
know, we're four pages from theend. She and Lord Peter whimsey
are at this concert, and thisreally bothered me. So Harriet
was musician enough to respectthis aloofness, you know Lord

(19:02):
Peter whimsey's aloofness. Sheknew well enough that the
ecstatic Rapture on the face ofthe man opposite meant only that
he was hoping to be thoughtmusical, and that the elderly
lady across over the way, wavingher fingers to the beat, was a
musical moron. She knew enoughherself to read the sounds a
little with her brains, youknow, unwinding the twining

(19:25):
chains of melody, link by link.
And Peter could hear the wholeintricate pattern, every part
separately and simultaneously.
And she goes on and on, rap.
Sing, poetic, you know, youknow, poetic about Lord Peter
whimsy, but looking at randompeople in the room and drawing

(19:48):
these judgments about them. AndI just thought this seems so
petty, like, Why is she so whyis she being so petty? And why
is Sayers ending with this?
Pettiness it. It basically saysshe and Peter are outside of
even so. So most people are notat this musical concert, right?

(20:08):
This is a small subset of thepopulation, and even among that
subset of the population, sheand Peter are special. And I
just thought it bothered me. I'mlike, don't end it this way.

On the pettiness against strangers I can I can
sympathize with more than what Iconsider cruelty to friends. So
you have the Mary Stokes, andshe was even pretty rude to
Peter's friend, Freddie. And Iknow I'm gonna butcher his last
name like Arbuthnot. Arbuthnot,yeah, who we see in almost all
of the books show up, and he islike a little bit of a ding

(20:46):
dong, but he's wildly helpful,and he adores he's not just a
friend of Peter. Peter's hisbest friend. He made Peter his
best man at his wedding. Hewinds up marrying into the levy
family, which I thought was socool, from whose body the very
first book, and she's just like,I don't know why they're
friends. I don't know whyPeter's friends with the sting

(21:07):
Dong and

this moron.
And I was just like, you are

so awful about friends like you don't
understand friends, they work.
So that probably bothered memore than just sort of the
casual pettiness to strangers,it felt

like to me that she doesn't have a whole
lot of grace. And sometimes Ifeel like I don't have as much
grace as I would like. And sowhen I see that reflected but
amped up, it really just it. Itbothered. It bothered me, maybe
more than it should have, but Imean, Agatha Christie also wrote

(21:43):
something about Harriet andsaying he, you know, Lord Peter
whimsey has this lengthycourtship with this tiresome
young woman called Harriet, youknow, and so I think readers
Were, and certainly are dividedon Harriet, where she's either,

(22:03):
you know, this is a feministnovel, and we, we really get
this voice and this characterand this philosophy, and it's,
it's interesting, and we likeher, or the opposite, where
we're like, oh, Harriet, like, Idon't know, can't,

like, Get a life?
Huh?

Unknown (22:23):
Yeah, yeah, she's

an interesting Harriet is an interesting
character, no doubt. And Ithink, you know, I'm projecting
here, because I don't know whatwas in Dorothy's mind, but I can
only surmise that she was tryingto give us a picture of this
couple, where you've got thiserudite, successful man and this

(22:51):
woman who's grappling with whoshe is and bringing them
together at The very end, whereshe finally will accept his
proposal. And juxtaposing thatconflict and that confusion

(23:12):
with, gee, there's nice musicgoing on. People are doing these
things over here and just kindof acting normal. Yeah, so it's
hard to say what was inDorothy's mind there, but I
think she was driving towardssome kind of a ending that would
be acceptable. Yeah,

I like your perspective there. Zj, and I
think that's what made me alittle more sympathetic to
Harriet is we talked about herjewel Perot, and how he's kind
of always the same staticcharacter. And so when I first
read this book, I was just like,Who is this character? This
Harriet vane is intolerable. I'mglad I'm not her friend. She

(23:57):
would just throw me under thebus for no reason, but from
seeing it in the context of thelonger story arc, I feel like,
actually, I'm seeing a womanwho's trying to unravel her own
baggage, and she's having a hardtime doing it, a woman who's
like, kind of been overcome byshame and scandal, and it's very
inwardly focused, and doesn'tknow How to evaluate the things

(24:21):
and people around her. And soit's it's not a static
character, and she's not, youknow, who she is at one moment,
isn't who she necessarily is atthe next moment

she see she seemed like this binary choice,
right? Like I can be this writerand independent and make my own
way in the world. She made fourtimes what her fiance boys had
made Philip boys. Or she can, inher mind, be married with
children, but she sees, does notsee these as options that can be

(24:53):
combined into one package. Orshe's trying to figure it out in
this book, is this somethingwhere I can have. Uh, you know,
intellect and heart. Can Canthese two things be combined?

CJ, I don't know if you know too much about the
moment in time, but it actuallyseems like that was very much
the choice at the time. All ofthe professors are single and
live at the college,

right? Yeah, I think Harriet is struggling to
be who she is, and she she wantsto be Peter's equal as a
detective, even though sheadmits that he's he's better,
but she kind of has this idea,I'm just as good, although she
doesn't have the notoriety yet.
She wants to be a successfulwriter, and she is, in many

(25:42):
ways, but in her own mind, she'snot there yet, and that raises
the question, did Dorothystruggle with these same
questions we're talking aboutnow, or did Dorothy really see
that character arc down theroad, when, when they get
married, they they're happy,they have kids and blah, blah,

(26:04):
blah, you know, or did thatinvolve in Dorothy's mind over
the years?

Was she grappling with these same
questions with the charactersthat Harriet herself is
grappling with through Goodynight? Okay, yeah,

could very well be because she grabbed, grappled
with some of that in hersubsequent marriage,

she's seen these women coming back to this
celebration, this whereeverybody starts the book, and
several of them have husbandsand children, and in Harriet
vane's mind, their intellectshave basically gone on vacation
or done and then Sarah, like youmentioned, there's all these
female dawns who are single and,you know, have immersed

(26:52):
themselves in this academiclife. And so there, there are
two choices potentially, andshe's saying she's having
trouble envisioning this bridgebetween the two, which arguably,
she's actually building thatbridge with Peter, maybe in the
previous books, but certainly inthis book, they're both evolving
to a place where they're, youknow, he even at the outset,

(27:17):
When he first meets everybody atthe there's the the senior
common room, the SCR and he'ssaying, you know, this is sort
of a sanctuary Oxford. We don'thave these dilemmas here about
men and women and careers. Andof course, you know, he just, he

(27:37):
writes it off as an issuebecause of the haven where they
happen to be located. So it'slike, this is this? It's not a
microcosm of the world. It'sactually this exception from the
world, this space where theyare. That's correct. So is, is
this book a mystery? Is it? Is Iwant to hear what you both

(28:03):
think. I mean, is it? Is it alove story? Is it a
philosophical treatise? Is it afeminist manifesto? Is it a
mystery? Some of the criticismfrom Julian Simmons and George
Orwell, you know, Julian Simmonssays it's the book is long
winded and ludicrous,ludicrously hard word to say
snobbish. And George Orwell saysslickness in writing is blinded

(28:25):
readers to the fact that DorothyL Sayers stories considered
detective stories are very badones. So, I mean, tell tell me,
like when you read this, is thisa detective story?

I didn't think so, because there was no no no,
murder. You know, no one washarmed, so to speak.

A lot of vandalism, no,

but it's a mystery.
In the respect that you'retrying to figure out who sent
these doggone notes, you know,who's behind this and why,
right? And so in that respect, Iwould say it's a mystery. And so
that leaves us, the readers,trying to figure this out, along
with Harriet, as we would in anytypical murder mystery, we're

(29:10):
trying to figure it out with thedetective or the amateur Sleuth.
So I'm just arguing both sides.

That makes the book complex. It's good. So
Sarah, is it a detective novel?

I I leaned on the side of Yes, so, but it's
definitely more, and I thinkthat's where we get. Sarah's
being this long lasting. Youknow, what were they? Queens of
queens of crime, queens ofcrime. I was like, what the
queen of what

the Dairy Queens of crime.

This long, lasting queen of crime, still
read today, largely considered amaster in so many ways. Is
because, sure, there's a mysterythere. And to me, I'll be
honest, it was an annoyingmystery. The first time I read
it, I was like, could somebodydie?

Did I miss the murder? The young woman
almost

committed suicide? I was like, Oh,
finally, a death. Where's theblood? She's fine, and she's
also so it was kind of annoying.
And since then, there was nobodydying. And I'll throw this
aspect out there. Well before Ido that, I would say she was
writing so much more, becausethere was a lot of this cultural
juxtaposition, male versusfemale, high class versus low

(30:35):
class, you know, and a lot ofmarried versus unmarried,
academia versus chill. And therewas a lot of just sort of set up
opposites involved here thataddress so many cultural issues
at this time period in thecontext of a mystery. And so
that's what I think she'sconsidered much more literary

(30:56):
than other mystery writers,yeah,

it's very literary. It's, she's a, she's
an excellent writer. I thinksomebody be hard pressed to read
one of her books and say, yeah,she's all right, like she, I
think she's a, she's a greatwriter. Is she a mystery writer?
Well, in this book, it gets, itgets confusing a little bit.

Oh, and that was the other thing I was just say
that DRO me bananas, and I'minterested how you guys felt
about it. But one of theoverarching themes that I could
not sympathize with was, but wemustn't create a scandal. We
must preserve Oxford's face atall costs. And everybody was

(31:39):
like, oh, yeah, definitely,yeah, for the sake of, you know,
Oxford, for the sake ofwomankind, for the sake of
women's education and themovement, we must not allow
there to be a scandal, and bydoing so, you know, I think
almost inarguably, they madethings worse, sure.

Well, just juxtapose that with what we see
happening in the world today.
There's so many institutionswhere we read about scandals and
they want to put it under therug, even, even at a time when
institutions and people talkingabout, we're all about
transparency, we're not so a lotof those issues that we saw in
the 1930s are repeating, yeah,if you look at that. And I

(32:20):
think, you know, Dorothy was,was really smart about, in many
ways, being satirical about thetimes that she was observing
with height, with academia andso on. But at the same time, she
was reflecting back the socialturmoil that was happening with
the change of more freedom forwomen was starting to starting

(32:44):
to open up, and so she was usingconflict to help us try to
understand that and how peoplewere arguing both sides of that,
that point in this novel.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was, I was a little
surprised how on board everyonewas was saving face and the
necessity of it.

Well, that's, that's the British way.

Maybe it is a cultural thing that us
Americans, or myself as anAmerican, can't fully
understand. But, um, yeah, it'snot until I think it was
Newland. Was her name, the youngwoman that tried to commit
suicide, yeah, and because, andI just felt it was because the
senior common room didn't wanteveryone to know that they were,

(33:31):
in fact, the suspects, yeah,they kind of kept it from the
students. Meanwhile, this poorgirl had received like, 30
letters from the poison pin, andhad no idea of the true
situation, and because they hidthat from her, she became
suicidal. So they made it worse.
Like, yeah, they made it theymade it worse.

So like, let's talk about this university
setting. So rarely in this bookare we outside of Oxford. We're
on the Oxford campus for almostthe entirety of the story, which
you know, as I've argued, is notnecessarily a microcosm of the
world, but it's this whole otheranimal. It's this. It's this

(34:12):
magical place where you knowthis. It's this cloistered place
where all of these single,unmarried, you know, no
children. Female dons can haveintellectual conversations at
every meal. They sit at tabletogether, and they have
conversations far and beyondanything you know, except for

(34:34):
the two of you that I don't havewith most people, the two of you
are exceptions. But like, whatabout this space? I mean, this
is a conscious decision, whereSayers said, I'm, I'm going to
write a 500 page book, and I'mputting everybody at Oxford. So
why, why is she doing this inyour, in your mind, what? What
is she getting out of thissetting? Well,

if I could start, um. Uh, many authors look at
setting as also a character. Andso if you think of Oxford and
this milieu as a character, thatcharacter of Oxford has a
certain tone, if you will, oferuditeness and hide a high

(35:23):
literature. And, you know, thisis, this is how we learn about
the world here. And you know,you people out there, you have
no idea, you know how the worldworks. So I think that setting
puts us in into this notionthat, oh, this is how people
think here, yeah,

yeah. So it's, you're, are you thinking
that? Okay, you just sort ofclose the walls in a little bit
and you're able to sort of put alens or a focus on, yeah, okay,
it's like

a movie camera.
Sure you focus in on Sarah?
Yeah, yeah. And so now we'relooking at Sarah's face and her
body language and everything,and we're getting a perspective
of how Sarah fits into this roomand how she interacts with it.

Would the conversation then be? Have been
much harder outside of Oxford,where everybody's living their
day in, day out, lives likeSarah. What do you think?

Yeah, I think I think zj is making a good point,
that the the setting, if I'munderstanding your point, is, is
adding to the conflict thatHarriet's trying to work
through. I you know, I got thesense that she was really
romanticizing, perhaps her timeat Oxford. And the thing that I

(36:45):
struggled with here, well, I canunderstand romanticizing your
time in college or kind of thejoy of learning was the
continued reference by multiplecharacters that like, this is
where real life happens. This isthe real life. Not all that
outside nonsense. And I'm like,Well, I feel it's a little the
opposite. I think it's theopposite. I think this is where,

(37:06):
you know, you sort of give intoyour whims, to delve into some
obscure matter of history thatno one is going to read in 30
years. And they seem to take theopposite tack, that, in fact,
you were uncovering the realitythat would be lasting. And I
think, I think no, it's it'slikely not. And from my

(37:28):
perspective, the reality that'slasting is actually more about
like people in your life and therelationships and the love that
kind of gets carried downgenerationally from your
existence. And I

think that setting helps us focus our understanding
of what Dorothy's trying to sayabout society today. You know,
if we moved Harriet and some ofthe characters off to Fleet
Street or someplace else inLondon, then we've got to look
at those scenes. We've got todescribe those scenes. And okay,
then you ask the question, well,what does that mean to the
story? What does that mean tothe characters? And it's that

(38:03):
becomes a divergent from what Iwant the reader to focus on.

Yeah, like people are like, what am I an
app for lunch today? Or, Hey,why? Why is this light so long I
want to cross the stupid Street?
Or, like, you have real life,have I've got to get back to
work. I only have an hour frommy lunch break. And so you get,
you get outside of real life inthis setting, and you have this
luxury of time to focus onthoughts that I think are

(38:30):
important thoughts andphilosophy about life, that that
Matt, you know this philosophymatters. But the luxury of being
on this campus, in this sort ofcloistered environment, this is
not normal for most people. Mostpeople don't have this
opportunity to do this. Though,there is a part of me that just

(38:52):
thinks I wouldn't mind doingthis for a good solid month, or,

I don't know for sure, yeah, but it'd be more
like a vacation unless, like,I'm getting to real life now.

But it also heightens the suspense, because
we know those gesturely notesare coming from somewhere around
here, and so if they were comingfrom Parliament or Big Ben or
something else, I mean, thatwould be a totally different
story

the greater world. So we know, we know it's
a woman because of the access tothe various buildings where the
notes are discovered. We thinkit's a dawn. We think it's one
of the women, you know, one ofthe senior common room women,
right? Or we're kind of led downthat path. But Sarah, I think

(39:38):
you said on second reading, it'sit's it's more clear to you that
it's not one of the that iteither it's not one of the
dawns, or it could be, therecould be a different solution to
this puzzle.

Definitely, yes, although, before I get into
that, I want to just pause amoment on the setting of Oxford,
because she also dives into thistheme as part of the setting and
part of the conflict. Yeah, thatwas, I don't know, a little
baffling to me, a little bitinteresting, and I think,
doesn't exist today, which isthis whole sexual repression

(40:10):
theme. And so we've used theword cloister, because all of
these female professors, she'sjust, they're always calling
them like these elderly virgins.
There's this sexual repression.
There's this environment whereyou get too many repressed
individuals together, and maybethey went crazy, and that's part
of the reason why they part inpart why they suspect it's a

(40:34):
dawn is it's it's a result ofsexual oppression, and it was
very difficult to get insidethat theme, probably because
that's not an environment thatexists today. But I don't know
what did you guys think aboutit, because it kept coming up
over and over and over. She waslike, Do I need a doctor? Do I
need a psychologist? Or do Iactually need a detective here?

(40:56):
Because she was so invested,yeah, the psychology of it,

yeah. No, I, I, I felt that also in some of
the Dons. So I'm, here's anotheradmission of mine. And I loved
this book. I sometimes got lostin the character. So I said,
Okay, this one's the dean andthis one's the history
professor, and facilitatebetween their name in their
title, oh, and time and again,I'm like, Okay, let me go back

(41:23):
to the start and figure out whothis character is. So but some
of them are really, like,adamant about their beliefs, and
they strongly, you know, assertthemselves. And so you could see
sort of the angry female kind oftrope here with some of them.
And so maybe a psychologist waswarranted. And at the end, they

(41:45):
do suggest a psychologist is, infact, warranted, because the
woman guilty of the crimes, Imean, she seems very disordered
to me, because this is just thestrangest possible way to strike
out. I felt.

But what did you feel? Yeah, she really struck
out with a very stressful, youknow, very hurt way of
expressing her anger. So I thinkthat's why Dorothy set it up
that way, that, you know, wehave all these clues where we

(42:21):
think it's these dawns, so andthen we find out, Oh, it's not
the person we thought

it was. That bothered, bothered me, and I'd
forgotten that from when I readit the first time. So when I
learn and, you know, this secondreading, I'm reminded that it's
not one of the dawns. Do we wantit? Yeah,

let's jump in there. Yeah. So, because I think
that touches on, like the classtheme, that's also really pretty
it really

bothered me the class. I felt that the
classism was extremelyproblematic. Because I felt that
Dorothy, Dorothy L Sayers andHarriet vane are making this
argument for educated women of acertain middle or upper class,
not for women more broadly, butfor women who are the

(43:06):
intellectual counterpart orcounterpoint to the middle
class, upper you know, wealthymen. And I'm waiting to find out
which of these dawns is going tobe exposed as the culprit, and
then I'm reminded of what I readyears ago, which is that, no,
it's not one of the Dons, it'sAnnie who is a scout. A scout is

(43:30):
a servant, or, you know,housekeeper, servant on the
campus. And I thought, Oh no, Ideliberately blocked this out. I
know I did.

Although, like I said, I feel like it did become
obvious on the second reading isyou have, I feel like Miss
Hilliard represented the verydawn stance, which is, she was
right. So again, again, Sarah'sis very masterful in her
treatment of this. So MissHilliard gives this really angry

(44:03):
speech about, why should marriedwomen be given privileges? Our
work is just as important ashaving children, if not more so.
And you know, at the end, MissLydgate is like, Oh, it's a
shame she never got married likeshe couldn't she can see the
root of the problem is morelikely jealousy than belief in
what she's actually saying,which is a very, still common

(44:27):
theme. I mean, you'll see allthe time on social media, folks
getting mad that I'm a singleperson, and this person with
kids wants me to give up my dayoff, like their kids are more
important than my activities.
Yeah, you know. And it's, youknow, it's a valid upset,
whether whatever source thatcomes from, so you have Miss
Hilliard there, yeah, but thenotes weren't. The notes were
just like, clearly againstacademic women. So clearly, and

(44:50):
there's only one character inthe book that expresses that
opinion out loud, and that'sAnnie, yeah. I mean, at one
point, Harriet's even like, whathorrible opinions. Why do you
work here? And Annie's like,well, because I need the money,
because my husband died. Andshe's like, Oh, so many joking.

Of course, go back to your work. But like,

Annie expresses these opinions over and over
again. She's the only one thatdoes. She's the only one whose
opinions match that of thepoison pen, yeah? So it's yeah,
I didn't think it was thatobvious on the first shooting,
but on the second, I was like,Oh yeah, I was that one.

I had blocked out that detail, so I came to it
fresh. And so I was like, Oh no,it's not and no, oh, come on.
It's got to be one of the dawns.
So I was very bothered by it,because I think it felt like a
cop out to me. There are justthere's this whole body of dawns

(45:50):
to choose from. And instead, shechose the scout. Why? Why? Well,

and yet the scout felt like her husband died
because of the higher education,and that was evidence against
his thesis.

So what So Miss? I think it's Miss Devine
discovers that he is a fraud,that some of his research is
fraud. And if I have thecharacters wrong, it's because
there were 4 million of them.
And I get, I get confused, but Ithink it was Miss divine. And
so, yes, because she has thesame initials as Harriet, D
Vane, and so it go. You know,this first initial note goes

(46:32):
into the what is the word I'mlooking for? They have the cloak
or something that they'rewearing. Oh yeah, they're gowns.
They're gowns. They wear thoseeverywhere they wear the gowns
everywhere. And so would a maneventually not have figured out
the fraud. So it feels likewomanhood and female

(46:54):
scholarship, these are thescapegoats. So it feels to me
like Annie is not in her rightmind, because not only then is
she attacking Miss divine, butshe starts broadening it. She
can write 30 letters to thispoor girl who attempts suicide.
I mean, wow, it's justincredible. So

it feels, you know, as you say, that it makes
me think that Annie's sort ofmaking almost the fundamental
mistake Harriet's making whenyou say, like, couldn't a man
have figured it out? Well, sure,but he didn't. A woman did sure,
you know. And so when Harrietbrings up the scenarios of like,
marriage really ruined thatwoman. You know, whimsy is the
one that points out. Well, youknow, it goes both ways. Sure,

(47:39):
this word cuts both ways. ButHarriet's not seeing that. She's
talking to women, and she'sseeing it as a gendered issue.
And I think that's what Annie'sdoing too. She's seeing it as a
gendered issue, okay?

And a one eye open, one eye closed kind of
thing, like she's only she'sfocused here.

I think it does indict a little bit the dawns,
though, because their cruelbehavior to her and Miss
Hilliard in particular, like,kicked her out of her nice
rooms, you know, and put her in,like, shared quarters with no
regard, no regard whatsoever.
Kids

go to the Jukes house, right?

And they act like they're so sympathetic. I
didn't see a lot of sympathythere. No, I didn't. It was
like, You downgraded her inclass. And, yeah, it could
happen to any of them. You know,when you lose everything and you
have to go out and get a job youdidn't think you'd ever have to
get Yeah, so I think it does intheir classism and their cruelty

(48:38):
to her and kind of driving herover the edge. That was my take
on it. Do

you sympathize with Annie?

Yeah?

Oh yeah,

Unknown (48:46):
okay, do you I do?

I do. I still think she's the psychologist was
warranted, so I Sure, sure Idon't. I don't feel like I
unders. So I think this is partof my dilemma with Annie is the
Dons. We spend a lot of timewith the Dons, meal after meal
after encounter after encounter,and Annie is interspersed
periodically in a way that weare led down a path. It's one of

(49:14):
the Dons. Oh no, at the endwe're going to discover it's
Annie. Well, I wanted tounderstand Annie better, at
least as well as I understoodmany of the Dons, none of whom I
understood as well as Harriet.
So I'm not pretending we were inall of their heads or so forth,
but I really felt that Annie isone dimensional as a character
general, or maybe, you know,maybe periodically, more than

(49:37):
one dimensional. But

well, I think in her acting out, she's very multi
dimensional. Pardon me, excuseme, because her acting out is
saying I blame you for what youdid to my husband. Yeah. But at
the same time, what she did wasnot socially acceptable, and I

(50:05):
was going to ask the two of you,do you think she committed a
crime?

Annie, yes, I do. I do in the sense that she
broke into people's rooms anddestroyed chess pieces and
terrorized people bully. I mean,bullying is a serious thing in
even in this, even in 2024, inthis day and age, I think she

(50:33):
bullied that girl to attempt tocommit suicide. Do I think it's,
you know, on the same level asyou know, having committed a
murder or something, I don't, Ido not. I think Sarah, I think
you kind of hit on it before,where this is a, to some degree,

(50:56):
a cry for help, and she keepselevating, you know, Annie keeps
doing more and more and more,going further farther. Like,
what if they had simply startedexposing this? They might have
shut this stuff down way beforethat, they did

well. And I wanted to go back to your point
about Annie seeing onedimensionally, and I think
that's because we're kind ofseeing her through Harriet's
somewhat classist gaze. WhenHarriet interacts with Annie,
she kind of talks to her, andthen she's kind of like, why is
Annie talking so much? I reallydon't want to hear about her
kids. And she's very dismissive,completely forgetting that, you

(51:34):
know, however many years ago,Annie would have been her equal
in society, the love the way inwhich she easily dismisses her,
was one of the things thatbothered me about Harriet and
and not just because Annie wouldhave been her equal, as though
that's a valid classist thing tothink, but it kind of makes it
sting that much more for Annie,and that's what we don't get a

(51:55):
great picture of her becauseshe's constantly being ignored
and dismissed by these dawns

well, and I think part of that in in defense of
Dorothy Sayers, I think shemeant to keep her kind of in the
background, because we didn'twant to reveal her too early or
give too many clues that this isthe person we ought to really be
looking at. Yeah,

I think it's just her, her separation from
most of the characters due toclass, and then her being the
culprit. And I thought, Oh, mygoodness. Like, who's the
natural person who did it? It'sthe washer woman, it's the
housekeeper, it's the servant.
I, you know, and we're eachbringing our own take and

(52:46):
issues. And so this is my owntake, my own issues, and I'm
bringing in into this story. But

I think that's great, because it makes it that
much richer. Yeah, it createsmore questions and more ideas
that we can bounce off of eachother, that things we hadn't
thought of before. So

zj, do you have a secret you're going to
share with us? Yeah,

oh my goodness.
I can't believe this hour flewby. Oh my gosh. What is your
secret?

Actually, it's Dorothy. Dorothy's secret. So if
you remember, in the lastepisode, we talked about Dorothy
had an affair with thisgentleman named John cormos, who
who wanted a sexual relationshipbut not marriage. She did not
want to use contraceptivesbecause of her religious

(53:40):
beliefs, and so they splitalmost very quickly. After that,
she started a new relationshipwith a man by the name of Bill
White, who really was beneathher class. He was a car salesman
and a motorcycle aficionado. Hewas living upstairs in the same
house that Dorothy was livingin, and they started an affair,

(54:05):
and they had a child together.
Soon as Dorothy announced thatshe's pregnant, Bill wanted
nothing to do with it, and hedisappears. And then Dorothy
found out that bill was alreadymarried, all right, had a wife
and a child. Oh, no. So here'swhat's interesting, is that

(54:26):
Bill's wife, when she found outabout this, became supportive of
Dorothy and moved in to whereDorothy was living so that
Dorothy could leave and have herchild. No and Dorothy decided to
keep it. She entertainedabortion, but she decided she
wanted to keep it so a young boywas born, and she named him John

(54:50):
Anthony, and gave him up to acousin of hers of Dorothy.
Cousin who took in children, andshe knew that her son would be
safe there, so Dorothy kept intouch with him, but the Son only

(55:11):
knew her as cousin Dorothy. Oh,wow. Then when Dorothy got
married later on to a gentlemannamed Fleming. Dorothy had hoped
that they could take the childand move in okay with him, but
he didn't want that. Her husbanddidn't want that. So the boy
continued to be raised at thiscousin's place, and it wasn't

(55:34):
until after Dorothy died, did heknow that was his mother. Wow.

No, that's so sad, yeah,

and she had written a will, because the war was
going on now, and she'd writtena will that if she should die in
bombing in London so on, that hewould inherit her estate. Of
course, she survived the war,and he still didn't know until
after she passed away. Wow. Sothere is some of that that I

(56:07):
think she's talking about in hernovels, where, you know, we talk
about the kids and where they'rekept. You know, we're talking we
talk about, she talks aboutthese relationships and her
hasn't her Harriet's hesitancyto get married. I think we

(56:29):
knowing that background, youkind of get a better idea of
maybe why she created Harrietand that kind of a character,
yeah,

and why she created like
the perfect man and Peterwhimsy. She certainly didn't
experience that. No way. Shedidn't know. Yeah, that's really
sad. That makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, very sad.

So before we wrap up, CJ, I want to hear more
about what, what you're workingon, about the groups that you're
actively involved in, how we canfind you all of this,

a bunch of associations. It sounds like

yeah, I'm active in three groups, the Rocky Mountain
chapter of Mystery Writers ofAmerica, and I was on the board
for several years. I'm theimmediate past president of
Rocky Mountain fiction writers,and we have about 600 members in
30 some states and fourcountries, and we'll have our
annual conference in September,and I'll be teaching a couple

(57:29):
classes there, one on seriesfiction and one on how to be an
author, on substack. And termsof what I'm doing, I've
completed a novel, a mysterythat my agent has and she's and
tells me that it's being read bysome houses great and also a

(57:49):
nonfiction book, The Mysteryminutes, based on on these
authors. I've also completed twoothers, a thriller and another
mystery that I've turned over tomy agent, and I'm currently now
releasing chapter by chapter, anew mystery on substack. Okay?
Plus, I'm writing the monthlycolumn on Rogue women writers on

(58:12):
on two of his dead writers.

How do people find you on substack? It's

Z james.substack.com, and you can
subscribe for free, or you cando a paid membership, whatever,
whatever you prefer. I'm happyto have free readers. I'm still
just trying to grow the audiencethere, and you can comment, and
I appreciate the comments,because they help me understand.

(58:38):
Get some feedback, mediafeedback,

nice. We'll put all that in the show notes. We
have you, yeah,

we have a page on our website currently
for you, but I'm going to addsome of these other links. So I
don't know that the links arecomprehensive yet, but readers
aren't readers, listeners andreaders and readers, they will
be. So I will update withsubstack, for example, on your
page. Oh, thank

you. The other thing I'm involved is
international thriller writers,and this has been my third year
of judging novels for the bestnovel. And I love doing it. We
get hundreds of novels that wehave to look through, but I view
it as a learning experience, andget a feel for what people are

(59:25):
writing about.

How do you read them all? Or do you read them
all?

You're not expected to read them all. You're
expected to read them as long asthey hold your interest. And if
they don't hold your interest,go on to the next one, then

they didn't win.
Kind

of the way real people read, yeah,

no, I like that. Yeah. They hold your
interest, or they don't,exactly, yeah. Wonderful. Well,
this

has been a treat.
Thank you for having me, and Ienjoyed the conversation. It's
been, I think, reallyinteresting and caused me to
think about some new thingsdifferently, about Dorothy
Sayers. Oh,

Sarah Harrison (01:00:00):
we have two thanks so much for being on. You
have such a great background onall of these writers. This

Carolyn Daughters (01:00:05):
conversation has been really fun, and like
most of our conversations, wefeel like we could do this all
day, but our guests would fleethe building. So we appreciate
the two episodes that you'vejoined us on. And yeah, and

Z.J. Czupor (01:00:20):
thank you for the gin and tonic,

tetonic and toxin, you know, yeah,

Z.J. Czupor (01:00:25):
perfect.

Thank you.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you
did, it would mean the world tous if you would subscribe, and
then you'll never miss anepisode. Be sure to leave us a
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(01:01:14):
want

to thank you for joining us on our journey
through the history of mystery.
We absolutely adore you untilnext time, Stay Mysterious.

Unknown (01:01:42):
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