staranise: A star anise floating in a cup of mint tea (Default)
Lis ([personal profile] staranise) wrote in [personal profile] lotesse 2014-10-17 05:13 am (UTC)

1. Oooh, I like that explanation. It makes "Armsman Simple" make sense--"Armsman [Complex]" would be the inherited ones.

2. They're detective novels set and written in the 1920s, starring an English aristocrat who affects to be an overbred flibbertigibbet, but is in fact a WWI veteran with PTSD who solves crimes. (You can very much see Miles' foundations in him.) I tolerate him and his silliness for HARRIET VANE (sorry *ahem*) a writer and Oxford graduate who is brittle, defensive as all fuck, and severely in need of someone who can wrap her in a blanket and give her hot cocoa not that she would take it. Peter and Harriet's relationship is the mold Miles and Ekaterin are cast in.

However, once or twice a novel there are glaringly anti-Semitic bits that seem stuck there just for fun, and it is a fly in my ointment.

Should you wish to read only one, Gaudy Night is the middle book and contains the fewest racist remarks (I can't remember any, but I might've missed one) while the complete progression I'd recommend is Strong Poison - Gaudy Night - Busman's Honeymoon. I didn't read any others.

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