This page is for tropes that have appeared in Lord Peter Wimsey.
For the rest:
- Geeky Turn-On: Having already fallen for Harriet from afar while watching her navigate the murder trial, Peter falls in love all over again during their first real conversation when he discovers she shares his penchant for literary quotations.
- Gender Vocabulary Slip: The central point of "The Entertaining Episode of the Article in Question".
- Genius Ditz: Freddy Arbuthnot has a deep understanding of the stock market, but in all other matters is a blithering Upper-Class Twit.
- Genre Savvy: Peter and other characters often reference how people act in detective stories and the extent to which it fits "reality." It helps that Harriet writes detective fiction herself.
- In Gaudy Night, the villain attempts to lure Harriet into a trap with a fake phone message from a friend. Harriet nearly falls for it, but then remembers a conversation with Peter laughing about how characters in novels never think to ring back and check the authenticity of messages like this.
- Genre Shift: It doesn't stick, but The Nine Tailors makes gestures toward Magic Realism, and in Busman's Honeymoon the existence of the Wimsey family ghosts is an easily accepted fact.
- Genteel Interbellum Setting
- Gentleman and a Scholar: Lord Peter. Expert on rare books, fond of obscure facts, World War I veteran who won the undying devotion of Sgt. Bunter (who becomes his valet), skillful in unarmed combat, an aristocrat with a self-deprecating sense of humor, an oenophile with an encyclopedic palate, legendary cricket player, keenly intelligent amateur detective, and (until he falls in love with Harriet Vane) definitely a ladies' man.
- Gentleman Detective: Lord Peter.
- Gentleman Thief: Nobby Cranton in The Nine Tailors wants to be one, but he's more of an aspirational burglar and spiv, and is not well-spoken or -mannered.
- Give Away the Bride: In Busman's Honeymoon, Harriet's father and all her other blood relatives are dead by the time she marries. The closest thing she has to a family are the scholars of Shrewbury College, so the Warden of Shrewsbury gives her away.
- A Glass in the Hand: In The Five Red Herrings, Peter is talking to a witness/suspect while playing with a tube of paint. When the witness innocently says something important to the case, Peter inadvertently tightens his grip and bursts the tube. The real clue here turns out to be the brand of paint.
- Good Old Ways: Lord Peter tries to uphold them; the positives and negatives of such an approach (including the arrogance and entitlement of the male-dominated aristocratic elite) are freely discussed.
- Go-to Alias: Peter generally uses "Death Bredon" (his two middle names).
- Grande Dame: Helen, Duchess of Denver is a humourless, stuffy Society woman; Lady Hermione Creethorpe, in "The Queen's Square," is a more typical elderly example.
- The Great Depression: Not a major factor, as it didn't hit England as hard as some other countries, but it is mentioned in the later books.
- Greedy Jew: Averted. Lord Peter and his fellow aristocrats associate with a number of Jewish financiers, jewellers, and so forth, who are invariably presented sympathetically. The anti-Semitism of the era is discussed, but the only characters who express it themselves are either villainous or rather stupid.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Several villains are motivated by severe jealousy, including Sir Julian Freke, William Grimethorpe, Eric P. Loder, and Standish Weatherall.
- Hanging Judge: The magistrate in Clouds of Witness and the judge in Strong Poison both deliberately steer their juries toward a guilty verdict on a capital charge. Fortunately, the former has no sentencing power, and the latter is stymied by an obstinate juror.
- Harmless Lady Disguise: In "The Entertaining Episode of the Article in Question", a lady's maid turns out to be a disguised male criminal. The noble lady employing the 'maid' is less than horrified to discover she's been dressed and undressed for the better part of a month by a young man. In fact she seems rather pleased.
- Height Angst: After he fails to identify a clue relating to a tall man's murder in Busman's Honeymoon, a passage describes the 5'9" Lord Peter as opining: '"If I'd had more inches," said Peter, regretfully (for his height was a sensitive point with him) ...'
- Hellish Horse: Invoked in "The Undignified Melodrama of the Bone of Contention", where a hoax haunting features a silent "death-coach" drawn by noiseless, headless horses.
- Henpecked Husband: In In the Teeth of the Evidence, the police inspector is uncertain whether the death was accident or suicide. After interviewing the man's wife, he begins to strongly suspect the latter.
- Here There Be Dragons: Discussed in "The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head". One of the things that arouses Lord Peter's suspicion of the villain is that he claims to have seen "hic dracones" on the maps in a mediaeval book. Lord Peter, being an actual book collector, knows how unlikely this is.
- Heroic BSoD: Peter was badly shell-shocked in World War I, some years before the series begins; during the series, he has two intense breakdowns: one in Whose Body? and another in The Nine Tailors. He also feels his innocence and his very morality slowly slipping away over the course of the series.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Will Thoday in Nine Tailors dives into a flood to try to save a friend who fell. Neither of them make it. It's also a case of Death Equals Redemption, as Will is feeling guilty over his part in Deacon's death.
- He Who Fights Monsters: Peter has sent so many people to their deaths, even though most of them were murderers themselves, that he has come to view himself as a killer just as evil as those whom he brings to justice—if not more so, since he does it for his own amusement.
- Hideous Hangover Cure: In Gaudy Night, a female student is badly hung over. Harriet Vane writes out a recipe for a hangover remedy and tells another student to go to the chemist (Americans would say "drug store") and have them make up a batch. It works. The book doesn't say what's in it, though Harriet says that she suspects from the ingredients that it will be awful and hopes that it is because that might encourage the student to avoid needing it again.
- High-Class Glass:
- Peter wears a monocle. He's been known to swap it out for a fake monocle that's actually a powerful magnifying glass for surreptitiously examining crime scenes, but Gaudy Night establishes that he wore a monocle even during his active military service, which suggests it's not entirely an affectation. (Gaudy Night also establishes that he had the monocle during his college days, but that could go either way, really.)
- The Bright Young Things' party in Murder Must Advertise has a female dancer who wears a top hat, monocle and patent-leather boots. And nothing else.
- Hollywood Atheist: Averted; Peter was raised in the Church of England, and, though he's unsure of his own beliefs, he knows Christianity inside-out and bears it no ill will. He's friendly with a number of clergymen, consults them for moral advice, and politely attends church services and assists in ringing the bells.
- Homage: The Nine Tailors has one to the Montague Rhodes James story "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas": both stories contain an encoded message that decodes to three biblical texts, giving the location of a treasure.
- Honorary Aunt: Viscount St George cajoles Harriet into the role. Later, of course, she becomes his real aunt.
- Honor Before Reason:
- Lord Peter suffers from this in his early cases. In Whose Body?, he feels compelled to visit the criminal shortly before they are arrested, and this warning very nearly allows them to escape justice.
- Gerald appears to be doing this for much of Clouds of Witness. Subverted, though, in that he feels (not without some reason) that the harm he will cause to someone else by speaking out may be as great as the harm he may suffer by keeping silent.
- Hooked Up Afterwards:
- Unpleasantness ends with Robert Fentiman taking Ann Dorland out to a show. Totally un-coincidentally he is exactly the kind of man Lord Peter predicted would like Anne very much and take a sincere pride in her intellectual superiority, having no pretensions himself in that area.
- In Have His Carcase, the murder victim was a professional dancer at a hotel, who had been going to marry one of the hotel's regular guests. The bride-to-be is inconsolable when she learns of his death, but at the end of the book there are signs she's finding solace in the arms of another dancer.
- Horrible Honeymoon: In "Busman's Honeymoon", the honeymoon of Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane is troubled by a slew of (mostly) minor annoyances rather than by great disasters. The worst of these is finding the dead body of their honeymoon cottage's former owner on the cellar steps — after they've cleaned up the cottage and thus destroyed nearly all of the clues.
- Huge Schoolgirl: Hilary Thorpe in The Nine Tailors, described as "A red-haired girl of fifteen... tall and thin and rather gawky".
- Hyper-Competent Sidekick: In Five Red Herrings, Lord Peter and the police are questioning a bumbling car salesman, Mr Saunders. They quickly find that he's hopelessly vague, but his secretary, Miss Madden, has the facts they need at her fingertips.
- Identification by Dental Records: Though the identification is usually subverted. For example, in "In the Teeth of the Evidence," an evil dentist fakes his own death by deliberately faking a patient's teeth to look like his, then murdering the patient. The Nine Tailors also featured a failed dental identification.
- I Did What I Had to Do: In Gaudy Night, Miss de Vine relates how she reported a case of academic malfeasance that was so bad it destroyed the man in question's entire career. (She had, by chance, discovered that not only did a letter exist that disproved his entire thesis, but that he knew of it and deliberately suppressed it.) She regrets that his life was ruined, especially since he had a family to support, but as a matter of principle simply couldn't allow the fraud to stand.
- Idiot Plot: Invoked in The Summation of Clouds of Witness — if Cathcart's death had been the only event taking place on the night in question, the solution would have been obvious. But, because Denver and Mary and Goyles were sneaking around on their own business at the same time, everyone involved in the case came to completely the wrong conclusions and nearly got themselves killed trying to untangle the mess.
- Idle Rich: Discussed with scathing contempt by Antoine in Have His Carcase. He works in a resort town and part of his job involves pretending to be interested while rich tourists tell him how difficult their lives are, and none of them have any idea what real difficulty is.
- If We Survive This: When they were serving together in the army, Lord Peter offered Bunter a job if they both survived.
- Imagine Spot: In Have His Carcase when Peter gently mocks Harriet for not being able to ride, she pictures him on a large, spirited horse. Her imagination then makes a "terrific effort" and places her by his side, riding an even larger, more spirited horse.
- Impersonation Gambit: The "The Bibulous Business of a Matter of Taste" has a villainous example; foreign agents get wind that Lord Peter has been sent to obtain certain secret information for Britain, and send an impostor to try and get the information first. The possessor of the secret, faced with two men claiming to be Lord Peter Wimsey, has to figure out a way to detect the real one. They're both impostors. Another character turns out to be the real Lord Peter, who travelled to the meeting under an alias, and had not yet made himself known when the first impostor showed up, at which point he decided to keep quiet and see what happened next.
- Impoverished Patrician: The Thorpes are this in The Nine Tailors due to the theft of a houseguest's priceless emerald necklace that they insisted on compensating her for.
- Inheritance Murder:
- In Unnatural Death, this is considered the most plausible reason why somebody might have wanted to murder old Miss Dawson — the difficulty being that she was already dying, and apparently had no intention of making a will, so her death would have made no difference to who inherited. The light dawns when Peter recalls that a new law recently went into effect, changing the rules of inheritance... and her early death ensured that the inheritance was disposed of under the old rules.
- In The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, inheritance also seems like the obvious motive, complicated by the fact that the will had some intricate conditions and not everybody involved had a clear idea what it stipulated, so the solution involves not only who stood to benefit from the death but who believed, rightly or wrongly, that they stood to benefit. All the direct legatees turn out to be innocent; the murderer is one legatee's gold-digging fiancé.
- Busman's Honeymoon uses a similar solution to Unpleasantness. In this case, it takes a while for inheritance to come up as a possible motive, because (unbeknownst, it turns out, to the murderer) the victim was on verge of bankruptcy and had nothing to bequeath except a pile of debts.
- In-Series Nickname:
- In Have His Carcase, Lord Peter gets in touch with some old friends at the Foreign Office, whom he addresses as "Chumps", "Bungo", and "Trotters". They, in turn, know him as "Wimbles".
- In Gaudy Night, one of the men who served under Peter in the War tells Harriet that his unit used to call him "Windowpane", on account of his High-Class Glass.
- It's revealed at one point that at school Peter was saddled with the mocking nickname "Flimsy", which evolved into the less disrespectful "Flim" as he gained the esteem of his peers.
- Inspector Lestrade: Charles Parker usually fills this role to Lord Peter. The two are very good friends, however, and Parker is a lot sharper than the stereotypical example of the trope, but he definitely benefits from Peter's lateral thinking skills.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: At the climax of Busman's Honeymoon, Lord Peter demonstrates how the murderer set up a death trap that killed the victim while the murderer was miles away establishing an alibi. Harriet remarks that it all depends on the victim not noticing that anything has changed about the way the furniture is arranged; the words are barely out of her mouth when the murderer walks in, doesn't notice that anything has changed about the way the furniture is arranged, and comes within inches of being killed by his own death trap.
- Inter-Class Romance:
- Peter, the younger son of a duke, courts Harriet, the orphan of a country doctor.
- Mary, daughter of a duke, courts Parker, a middle-class police inspector.
- Interdisciplinary Sleuth: Usually Peter is an Amateur Sleuth, but occasionally his sleuthing intersects with his bibliophily, his classical education and/or his historical training.
- I Owe You My Life: Harriet feels this way toward Peter after Strong Poison, and resents him for the debt, for the continuing scandal she endures after the trial, and for restoring her to life and then pursuing her affections.
- I Remember Because...:
- One witness in Unnatural Death notes that she remembers Miss Dawson's maids' surname because it was such a silly name: "Gotobed".
- Averted in Whose Body? and Clouds of Witness, where investigators and witnesses spend several pages painstakingly reconstructing memories with reference to physical records, and where I Remember Because... explanations are specifically referred to as inadmissible in court.
- Subverted in Strong Poison; the servants remember in detail everything Boyes could possibly have eaten or drunk in their house because the murderer is their master and he made sure they remembered, to create the impression Boyes couldn't have been poisoned on their premises.
- Ironic Echo:
- Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas, and Tailor Paul. Nine Tailors Make a Man.
- The first spoken word in Whose Body? is the same as the final spoken word in Busman's Honeymoon, and is said by the same person, but in a very different context and mood.
- It Never Gets Any Easier: Regularly sending people to the gallows eventually causes Peter to view himself as an evil person, the cause for the He Who Fights Monsters and Hollywood Atheist tropes above.
- It's for a Book:
- In Unnatural Death, Peter claims to be writing a history of local families when he investigates the Dawson family tree.
- Inverted in Strong Poison: the suspicious behaviour that makes Harriet a suspect in Boyes' murder really was research for a book.
- In The Five Red Herrings, the killer acquires a tool he uses to fake up his alibi by claiming he needs it for a book-binding hobby.
