The wars don't come up much in the Amelia Peabodys, except as it touches intelligence work in Egypt. Ramses, being young and adventurous and brilliant, gets pulled into it. Personally, if you stop at He Shall Thunder in the Sky, which resolves the great question of several books, I don't think you'll regret it. I also think Elizabeth Peters got too enthralled with Sethos, because he nearly takes over the later books.

I also think Elizabeth Peters got too enthralled with Sethos, because he nearly takes over the later books.

So he's like the Spike of the series.

Except Amelia doesn't sleep with him, and is only briefly tempted into admiring him. Her love for Emerson is so pure!

I'll very much second Consuela's recommendation of the non-Cadfael Ellis Peters mysteries.

Inspector Felse! Love him.

I also like Ngaio Marsh, except as with Sayers, there's that whole classist racist homophobic thing that creeps in occasionally.

I also like Ngaio Marsh, except as with Sayers, there's that whole classist racist homophobic thing that creeps in occasionally.

I don't know what bothers me more - noticing those things upon a re-read of a favorite, or realizing that I didn't notice them at all the first time I read them.

I hope that I would have noticed the repeated use of "dago" in Have His Carcase when I first read it, and I merely forgot about it in the intervening years. ::sigh::

WRT Marquez, there have been rumors for the past two years or so about it, so the acknowledgment is sad but unsurprising. It does lend a new wallop to the patriach (I was trying to remember what his name was but all the Buendias blend!) in One Hundred Years of Solitude.

It does lend a new wallop to the patriach (I was trying to remember what his name was but all the Buendias blend!) in One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Col. Aurelio Buendia, no?

Sayers is as you say horribly classist, racist, anti-semetic and a damn good writer.

As to Marsh. I like her up to a point. Basically IMO, while she is not one of those writers who writes the same book over and over again, she writes the same 12 books over and over again. So by the time you have read 20 or so of her books, you have really all 500 or whatever number of books she wrote.

I don't know that Sayers was necessarily racist (or no more racist than most of her contemporaries): all of the really dodgy stuff is in dialogue rather in narrative, so it's hard to know what's authorial and what's accurate presentation of contemporary behaviors/beliefs. And she did have a really sympathetic portrayal of a West Indian priest who turned out to have an unexpected connection with a wealthy British family (this was in Unnatural Death).

But the classism is so deeply embedded in the books it's impossible to divorce it from the writer. And her attitude regarding women is a bit odd. The Miss Climpsons of her world are competent and yet pathetic, which is an odd combination. But then you get Harriett, who is awesome, and many of the women in Gaudy Night, which struggles pretty overtly with a lot of feminist issues. I think it's an instance of the writer herself dealing with these questions, and being willing to address them publicly.

If only she'd turned the same critical eye to the issues of class and race that she seems to ignore. It's such a pity.