1."Do you love a little suspense in your life? Have you ever read a book that keeps you twisting and turning until the last page? Tell us about it (but not too much , we want to be left hanging ourselves). Or maybe there is a series of mysteries that you adore. Why do you keep reading about the same detectives?"***
2. To expand on that a little: the new TV series Castle revolves around a popular mystery writer. There’s even talk that a novel will be published supposedly written by Castle himself. TV and books will muddy the entertainment waters once again. I think we all know of the Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes series on PBS and BBC as well. Not to mention the new movie Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law will open December 25, 2009. Looks pretty exciting!
If you were to be given special TV or movie producing powers, which mystery novel character(s) would you create a TV series or movie for? Who would you cast in the major roles?
You can:
Get creative and post photos of the cast, even the locations you’d love to see them in. If you’re really feeling artsy, create a fake imbd page on your blog or make a trailer for your fantasy show.

I read a lot of detective novels. Most of them are historical ones. I like to read about of a lot of different time periods, the more ancient the better, but my favourite detective novels are probably the ones by Dorothy L. Sayers with Lord Peter Wimsey. I like gentleman detectives, and Lord Peter Wimsey is a perfect example. He’s a rich nobleman with expensive hobbies, he has a smart butler who assists him, and his sidekick, a police inspector, becomes his brother in law in the course of the books. The books’ plots often revolve around a certain topic and a lot of insider information is given about those topics. For example in “Murder must advertise” we learn a lot about the ins and outs of an advertising agency at the time.

The books with Lord Peter Wimsey are:

• Whose Body? (1923)
• Clouds of Witness (1926)
• Unnatural Death (1927). From the papers held by the Marion Wade Centre, it is clear that Sayers’ original title was The Singular Case of the Three Spinsters.
• The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928)
• Lord Peter Views the Body (1928) (12 short stories)
• Strong Poison (1930)
• Five Red Herrings (1931)
• Have His Carcase (1932)
• Hangman’s Holiday (1933) (12 short stories, 4 including Lord Peter)
• Murder Must Advertise (1933)
• The Nine Tailors (1934)
• Gaudy Night (1935)
• Busman’s Honeymoon (1937; the play on which it was based, co-written with Muriel St. Clair Byrne, was published in Love All & Busman’s Honeymoon, ed. Alzina Stone Dale, 1984)
• In the Teeth of the Evidence (1939) (18 short stories, 4 including Lord Peter) (editions published after 1972 usually adds Talboys, the last story she wrote with Lord Peter)
• Lord Peter- the Complete Lord Peter Wimsey Stories (1972) (the first edition contains 20 Lord Peter short stories; the second edition includes all 21 Lord Peter short stories by adding "Talboys")
• Sayers on Holmes, Essays and Fiction on Sherlock Holmes, introd. Alzina Stone Dale (2001; Booklet of 54 pages reprinting various Holmesian essays by Sayers, and including a previously unpublished BBC radio script, broadcast in 1954, in which an 8-year-old Lord Peter brings Holmes a problem of a missing cat).
• Thrones, Dominations (1998) (This Lord Peter novel was begun by Sayers in 1936, completed by Jill Paton Walsh and published in 1998.)

source: Wikipedia

He meets his later wife, Harriet Vane, in “Strong Poison” for the first time and from then on this romance (it takes a long time to develop from her side) is an ongoing theme, even if not the main one) in the subsequent books. “Thrones, Dominations” is set after their honeymoon (the honeymoon story would be “Busman’s honeymoon”), but there is one short story which is set years after where the Wimseys have a son who is around 4 or 5 as far as I can remember.

Some of the books have already been turned into films. There are excellent BBC TV mini series from the 70s with Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey. He still has that down-to-earth feel that Lord Peter Wimsey displays on occasion, and yet he is sophisticated and refined. Edward Petherbridge who played Wimsey in a couple of films never achieved that in my eyes. After seeing Ian Carmichael I can’t imagine a better cast as Lord Peter Wimsey, so no suggestions from me.

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