The Documents in the Case

A novel published in 1930, written with Robert Eustace, a medical practitioner who supplied the plot device and the scientific detail while Sayers wrote the prose. It is the only one of her twelve novels without Lord Peter Wimsey. In the manner of Wilkie Collins, whom she admired and on whom she was then working, the story is told almost entirely through letters and statements, gathered as a dossier by the son of the victim, a staid suburban householder named Harrison, as he seeks justice for his father. The household's tensions, an affair between Harrison's young wife and a painter lodging upstairs, and a fatal meal of mushrooms lead to a solution that turns on a point of chemistry. Reviews were favourable at publication. The forensic analyst Sir James Lubbock of the Wimsey books also appears.