For someone who loves Peter Wimsey, Paul Temple and the Toff...

[EmpressOfTheSevenOceans]

Also Father Brown, Agatha Raisin, Poirot and Miss Marple.
DW likes her mysteries not too graphic ( so no Gerritsen, Slaughter, Cornwell for instance) and preferably set at least slightly in the past. She's run out and asked me to ask MN for suggestions... Any ideas?

I'm a fan of the authors mentioned and would thoroughly recommend the books of Josephine Tey. She's a very good writer, though a bit dated (having written in the early part of the last century). Her detective books (The Shining Sands, The Man in the Queue, A Shilling for Candles etc) all feature the same detective and I enjoyed them hugely. Hope this helps!

I prefer Hamish MacBeth to Agatha Raisin.

Georgette Heyer wrote several mysteries, some were extremely silly (the earliest ones) but a couple were very good.

Thank you, thank you Josephine Tey, Georgette Heyer, I completely forgot M C Beaton wrote Hamish MacBeth as well...

She may enjoy

Ngaio Marsh - Roderick Alleyn
Margery Allingham - Albert Campion
Elizabeth Peters - Amelia Peabody (?)

Patricia Highsmith?
Nancy Spain wrote a couple murder mysteries - Poison for Teacher

Seconding Josephine Tey.

I would suggest the Carola Dunn Daisy Dalrymple series of books.
Ann Granger - Mitchell and Markby series (not set in the past but god and not violent - traditional whodunnits
Also Ann Grangers Lizzie Martin books -Victorian whodunnits.

I second the ones others have recommended - esp. Josephine Tey she's a great writer - I'd recommend The Franchise Affair and Brat Farrar.

Also - a really excellent and very well written mystery/crime series is the Shardlake books by C J Sansom - set in tudor times.

Edmund Crispin is quite a good old writer of traditonal puzzle whodunnits (think he was writing in the thirties/forties?)

Oh and Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver books (roughly comparable to Miss Marple type whodunnits)

Just thought (sorry I keep remembering something after I've clicked post!) if she goes for the Shardlake books its probably a good idea (though not absolutely essential) to read them in order the first is called 'Dissolution'.

P D James is another writer in the more traditional style.

Also - Nicholas Blake (detective story writing pseudonym of the poet Cecil Day Lewis) is another one she might enjoy - along the same lines as DL Sayers et al.

For a complete diversion, try Jasper Fforde

Also seconding Margery Allingham and (to a slightly lesser extent) Ngaio Marsh

This is brilliant, thank you

What about DM Greenwood? Churchy mysteries, about 15-20 years old now. Well written, not graphically gory, lovely acid observation of church politics. The 'tec is a woman in deacon's orders-very upper class and horsy, which I always enjoy (love Josephine Tey for similar reasons).

Fear DMG may be out of print though. I got mine through AbeBooks.

Yy Josephine tey. And there's a series by Nicola Upson where Tey is the detective.

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman might suit too (PD James)

Inspector Morse books?

Oh God yes, Snatch, Inspector Morse. And we'll chased up DM Greenwood, thanks lambbone.

Michael Innes (eg Death at the President's Lodging, Appleby's End) - I would say these would definitely appeal

And what about Dornford Yates - the Chandos books (disclaimer, I haven't read them for years, but I remember them being amusing)

Ooh not heard of those.

DW wants me to thank everybody, she's very happy and rather impressed - she's had rthe MN List of Driving Insults and now she's getting a list of authors that should keep her going for ages. She'll be joining herself at this rate