Book #4 of 15 in the Lord Peter Wimsey detective series.

Two deaths in the same family, separated by hours—or perhaps not. A fortune that depends upon which came first.

When Lord Peter Wimsey gathers with his fellow members of London’s exclusive Bellona Club to observe Armistice Day, he finds ninety-year-old General Fentiman in his usual chair, apparently asleep behind his newspaper, but the sharp-eyed sleuth realizes that this gentleman has been dead for hours. News arrives that on that same morning, the General’s wealthy, estranged sister, Lady Dormer, also died, and her peculiar will makes the precise order of their deaths worth half a million pounds: if the General survived her, family the fortune passes to his struggling heirs; if he died first, nearly everything belongs to one individual—her companion, Ann Dorland.

Asked to investigate, Wimsey must determine exactly when the General died, but no one saw him arrive at the club, and his previous whereabouts can only be confirmed by an elusive witness who may not exist at all. Surrounded by shell-shocked veterans and their rigid code of silence, Wimsey must expose false alibis, concealed engagements, contradictory accounts, and financial desperation to uncover the truth before another life is destroyed.

The fourth book in Dorothy L. Sayers’s iconic Lord Peter Wimsey mystery series, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club combines an ingenious time-of-death puzzle with psychological suspense, dark wit, and incisive social commentary on post–World War I England. This Golden Age detective novel is perfect for fans of Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts, and R. Austin Freeman, as well as readers who love gentlemen detectives, postwar mysteries, intricate whodunits, forensic puzzles, aristocratic period dramas, and classic British crime fiction. Ideal for libraries, book clubs, and collectors of vintage mysteries.