Dorothy Sayers explains enemies slash
Sep. 22nd, 2008 12:23 amI've been rereading the first Lord Peter Wimsey novel, Whose Body. (I do a lot of rereading during the semester, because I can reread over several days and in five-minute increments without losing track of the plot. The number of times I have thus read Men at Arms and Gaudy Night does not bear thinking about.)
Anyway, in this reading, I came across a marvelous paragraph in the denouement. Lord Peter is visiting the man he now knows to be the killer, but he is pretending to be there for another reason, and the killer is pretending not to know he's in danger (while simultaneously trying to kill Our Hero). Lord Peter just reached out and prevented the villain from carrying out what was probably an attempt on Peter's life:
Anyway, in this reading, I came across a marvelous paragraph in the denouement. Lord Peter is visiting the man he now knows to be the killer, but he is pretending to be there for another reason, and the killer is pretending not to know he's in danger (while simultaneously trying to kill Our Hero). Lord Peter just reached out and prevented the villain from carrying out what was probably an attempt on Peter's life:
The silence was like a shock. The blue eyes did not waver; they burned down steadily upon the heavy weight lids below them. Then these slowly lifted; the grey eyes met the blue -- coldly, steadily -- and held them.Isn't that awesome, guys? I love it kinda a lot.
When lovers embrace, there seems no sound in the world but their own breathing. So the two men breathed face to face.