March 3, 2026

The Complete, Annotated Clouds of Witness Is Published!

Actually, “The Complete, Annotated Clouds of Witness” has been out for a couple of weeks, but finally, after a long hiatus, the second book in the Lord Peter’s Library (which I just came up with, so maybe we’ll refer it to that and maybe not) is out.
Clouds of Witness cover
“The Complete, Annotated Clouds of Witness” had a long gestation. A really long gestation. Like, I had the book ready to go after “Whose Body?” appeared sometime around 2010.

It was then, that I decided to consult a copyright attorney, and learned that I could not publish the book. Oops.

So I shelved the book for years until the copyright expired (in everywhere except the UK and EU, and a couple of other countries). I revised the book, added more material, relaid it out in Affinity instead of Word, edited it, proofed it, gave it to the wife for her edits. Mucked about with it further, and finally released it.

Here’s what you’ll find:

* The complete text of the novel. It sounds weird, but we’ve met people who did not know that an annotated novel contains the novel, so we want to educate them as well.

* Hundreds of footnotes. Word definitions, historical events, sources for literary quotes, observations about the novel, and anything else you can think of.

* Essays on Sayers, her writing the novel, Yorkshire (where the novel takes place), the Bournemouth Murder (mentioned in the novel), famous criminal trials in the House of Lords (where they took “a jury of your peers” literally), a possible inspiration for the book, air travel at the time (Lord Peter flies the Atlantic with a pilot before Lindbergh’s flight), a gallery of book covers, contemporary reviews of the novel, and my review of the 1972 TV version starring Ian Carmichael.

Right now, only the trade paperback is available, but I have a version of the ebook finished and being tested, so look for the ebook version in March.

Here are some sample pages to give you an idea of it.

First, one of two pages describing the book in your metaphorical hands:

The map of Riddlesdale Lodge. This is my own design, inspired by one I saw in “Sidelights by Sayers,” the journal published by the Sayers’ Society in Britain.