Thrones, Dominations

Thrones, Dominations is a Lord Peter Wimsey–Harriet Vane murder mystery novel that Dorothy L. Sayers began writing but abandoned, and which remained at her death as fragments and notes.

Sayers had charted the developing relationship between Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane over four published novels, culminating in Busman's Honeymoon, the action of which takes place immediately following the couple's wedding.

[6] Jill Paton Walsh followed it in 2002 with another Wimsey/Vane novel, A Presumption of Death, set during World War II and based on some short wartime writings of Sayers known as "The Wimsey Papers".

The couple are personally happy, having resolved many of the problems in their relationship caused by character and circumstance, but must now tackle the practical details of bringing their lives together, including domestic and working arrangements, and social and family obligations.

(He is also asked to undertake sensitive diplomatic duties connected with the problematic behaviour of the new king, and as the 1936 abdication crisis looms, he gloomily predicts the coming war with Hitler's Germany.)

Meanwhile, Harriet straightens out her domestic situation, learning how to fulfill her new role whilst keeping her own identity, and finds a practical solution to allow Wimsey's devoted manservant Bunter to marry without having to leave the household.

[7] A. N. Wilson agreed that the joins in the material appeared "seamless" to the amateur reader, but found the plot in the main "rather feeble";[8] he noted Paton Walsh's attempt to parody Sayers' style, "...the really corking snobbery, the sub-Wodehousian banter, and the conceited swapping of obvious quotations", but judged it a failure.

[8] Joyce Carol Oates in the New York Times called the book "engrossing, intelligent and provocative",[3] praised the power of its descriptive passages, and found its darker tone more in keeping with the later Wimsey novels than with the "zest and flashy originality" of the earlier ones.