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Abstract
In this book, in addition to the essays to be discussed below, several line drawings are reproduced: three for Sayers's centenary, pp. i, 183, and 279 (and the first and the third also appear, in part, on the front and the back covers respectively); two accompanying Patterson's essay "'All Nerves and Nose': Lord Peter Wimsey as Wounded Healer in the Novels of Dorothy L. Sayers," p. 1 (the two drawings titled "Shamamic Descents of Lord Peter Wimsey" and "Shamanic Ascents of Lord Peter Wimsey"); another two accompanying "'A Comedy of Masks': Lord Peter as Harlequin in Dorothy L. Sayers's Murder Must Advertise," p. 70 (the two drawings titled "Harlequin's Dive" and "Harlequin in the Tree"); and five accompanying "'Beneath That Ancient Roof': The House as Symbol in Dorothy L. Sayers's Busman's Honeymoon," p. 98 (the five drawings titled "Talboys," "Bedroom Casement," "Chimney," "Kitchen," and "Door and Drain"). [...]this reviewer is not convinced by Northrop Frye's definition of farce in his treatment of genres in Anatomy of Criticism, which is Patterson's touchstone in her discussion. Patterson discusses uses of stereotyping of Jews and dark-skinned persons in Whose Body?, Strong Poison, Unnatural Death, Murder Must Advertise, Have His Carcase, Clouds of Witness, a note in The Man Born to Be King (not a novel), and Busman's Honeymoon. Besides other editorial work, he has published essays on Lewis, Tolkien, Charles Williams, Dorothy L. Sayers, and some related authors, as well as such popular writers as Anthony Boucher, Ellery Queen, John Dickson Carr, Poul Anderson, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Gene Wolfe, and such standard authors as the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Hawthorne, Tennyson, and John Heath-Stubbs.