One might consider by looking at an overview of the plot for Strong Poison that the story was a very uncreative and cliché like thing. But it is quite the contrary: Mystery author Harriot Vane is accused of murdering her husband, Philip Boyes. Boyes tricked and confused Vane until she broke the relationship. Boyes about a year later suffered repeated attacks of fevers and illness, while Vane bought poisons, to supposedly be used as a test for her new book. For years it was believed that Boyes died of natural causes; but a few doctors still thought that foul play was involved. The detective, Charles Parker, was a good man and found that on the way to his death, Boyes stopped to eat at his cousin’s house, but all the food and drink there was shared by more than two people. The only other time between then and when he was struck with gastritis so bad he finally died, as at Harriot Vane’s house, in a cup of tea.
All this time, Lord Peter Wimsey is blabbering to Vane of her innocence and convincing and telling her he will catch the real murderer. Wimsey did a little searching of his own and found packets of arsenic, a deadly powder that was put into an omelet eaten by both Urquhart, the cousin, and Boyes. Wimsey tricked a confession out of Urquhart before bringing his case to court. The characters that Sayers creates are some of the most defined and yet deceptive in all of mystery writing. Lord Peter Wimsey is one of the most clueless people in all of literature but always manages to save the day. He is almost what you would call a ditzy prince, a rich, powerful, crazy, funny, dolt. He is gifted with the ability to stumble onto things and all right on the answer. Harriot Vane is your average middle class lady, who wrote average books, but also had some of the most un-average ways to do the things she does. Even Agatha Christie, the most renowned writer in mystery, does not buy and test the poisons used in her stories. Philip Boyes, was a very unorthodox man,...