Lord Peter Wimsey, gentleman detective, is in love. Unfortunately, it is with a woman who has very nearly been convicted of murder.

Crime novelist Harriet Vane is being tried for the murder of her ex-lover, a writer with strong views on free love and atheism who seems to have not been true to his professed beliefs. He has died by arsenic poisoning. Harriet is known to have quarreled with him; she saw him the night he was poisoned; and she has just written a manuscript describing how easy it is to poison someone by arsenic. Lord Peter believes in her innocence, though, and has mere weeks to find the actual culprit before she’s convicted and hanged.

In this, the sixth Lord Peter Wimsey novel , Dorothy L. Sayers offers a humorous look at the English aristocracy, proponents of free love, the writing and publishing of crime novels, and a fake seance. Sayers based the murder victim on her own ex-lover, lending an autobiographical note to the story. First published in 1930, the novel has been adapted for television and radio multiple times.