SOURCE: Gaillard, Dawson. “Between the Sea and a Precipice: Sayers's Detective Short Stories.” In Dorothy L. Sayers, pp. 11-24. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1981.

In the following essay, Gaillard traces the character development of Sayers's protagonists Lord Peter Wimsey and Montague Egg.

The writer of detective fiction, according to Sayers, can turn neither the plot nor the characters loose. Both she and E. C. Bentley contrasted the detective writer's approach with that of a nonformulaic writer, John Galsworthy. He claimed that he sat in a chair, pipe in his mouth, pen in his hand, and waited for his characters to find their way. For the characters in detective fiction, Sayers pointed out, the future is fixed. They must obey the laws of the plot as well as their own. They cannot, she asserted quoting Galsworthy, “kick free of swaddling clothes and their creators.” The detective writer must...