From School Library Journal
YA-Lord Peter Wimsey is back. Walsh has completed a manuscript begun by Sayers but never finished. Readers already familiar with Lord Peter and his new wife Harriet Vane will not be disappointed and those who have yet to meet the pair will enjoy Harriet's discourses on writing mysteries for fun or profit and Lord Peter's "piffle." Here, the couple work to solve the murder of a society newlywed. The narrative includes much social commentary about England between the wars and even a fascinating trip through the London sewers. Walsh brings a fresh perspective, but remains true to Sayers's characters and tone. YAs interested in literary British mysteries or those just looking for a good historical novel will appreciate this recasting and may even be led back to the originals.
Susan H. Woodcock, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
The legion of Sayers fans will rejoice at the release of this new Lord Peter Wimsey novel 61 years after the publication of Busman's Honeymoon. So revered is the creator of the Wimsey novels that there is even a library mystery listserv called Dorothy-L. While perhaps not vintage Sayers, this novel fragment, completed by English novelist Walsh from Sayers's outline, takes up where the honeymoon left off: Now murder intrudes on the newly domesticated Lord Peter and Harriet Vane as one of their acquaintance, also newly married, is murdered. This has all the requisite stock characters, witty dialog, social satire, and red herrings of a classic Sayers, though perhaps marriage has mellowed the characters a bit too much. Highly recommended for all collections.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Lord Peter Wimsey lives again, courtesy of Walsh's completion of a 170-page typescript Sayers abandoned in 1939. In a particularly happy accident for fans whose nostalgia has turned mystery's Golden Age into a historical retreat from the present, Wimsey's return from his honeymoon with mystery novelist Harriet Vane is given the most distinctive real-world political framework of all Sayers's novels: the death of King George V, which plunges England into mourning and into the round of Bertie Windsor's romances. As Wimsey and his bride feast on each other's wit and charm, and Bertie grazes more indiscriminately, news comes from Hampton that noted beauty Rosamund Harwell has been strangled at the cottage her besotted husband never had time to have decorated for her. When theatrical angel Laurence Harwell produces an alibi for his wife's murder, Wimsey, still shaken by his first look at the corpse of a personal acquaintance, makes the rounds of Rosamund's disgraced father, recently released from prison after serving time for fraud; of Streaker and Basher, the lowlife prison mates who were blackmailing him; and of the friends of vanished actress Gloria Tallant, who has a surprisingly close connection to Rosamund. Meanwhile, back in town, Harriet is vanquishing her husband's snobbish sister-in-law with a queenly ease worthy of Richardson's Pamela. The murder plot is ordinary, even creaky in its deceptions, but delighted fansravenous for their first glimpse in over 60 years of Wimsey's foppish relations, Harriet's professional friends, Bunter, Chief Inspector Parker, and the restwill be more than compensated by seeing all the old crowd present and faithfully evoked by Walsh (The Serpentine Cave, 1997, etc.). -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
Thrones, Dominations is a literary sport, and for the most part successful, wonderfully written in its descriptive passages (a trek through the London sewers is vividly rendered) and provocative in its pointed discussion of detective fiction. -- The New York Times Book Review, Joyce Carol Oates
Subtle and discursive in the classic Sayers manner, Thrones, Dominations is pure pleasure. -- The Wall Street Journal, Tom Nolan 
