Unnatural Death

When Lord Peter Wimsey overhears a chance conversation in a restaurant, he becomes convinced that a seemingly natural death was actually a cunningly executed murder—one so perfect that it left no evidence whatsoever. The victim was an elderly spinster, Agatha Dawson, who died just three months before a change in the law would have drastically altered how her substantial estate was distributed. Her great-niece Mary Whittaker inherited everything, but the attending physician, who confides his suspicions to Peter over dinner, insists that something was terribly wrong about that death. With no body to exhume, no poison to detect, and no apparent motive strong enough for murder, Peter sets out to prove that a crime was committed—even as more deaths begin to pile up around the investigation. Aided by the indomitable Miss Climpson and her network of "superfluous women," Peter must unravel a fiendishly clever plot that exploits the very limitations of the law. First published in 1927, Unnatural Death showcases Dorothy L. Sayers at her most ingenious, presenting a murder mystery that hinges on a real gap in British inheritance law and features one of detective fiction's most chillingly amoral killers. A landmark of the golden age that proves some of the deadliest crimes leave no trace at all.