The early Nancy Drew (and The Bobbsey Twins) were bad enough that some of it made me cringe as a child. Especially when my mom read The Bobbsey Twins out loud, and Sam and Dinah (the black servants) sounded like "I's gwine a go down t' tha stoah and buys me some a dem der watermelons." It was really bad. I am not sure if those were changed in later incarnations.

The Agatha Christie stuff is more along the lines of -- "he may be an ass, but he certainly didn't want a Russian Jew calling him one!"

Yeah, but then there was The Mystery of the Missing Mick, which didn't go over too well with the Irish population.

Heh. Nope, I'll bet it didn't.

Yeah, but then there was The Mystery of the Missing Mick, which didn't go over too well with the Irish population.

Heh. Nope, I'll bet it didn't.

That was just a (bad attempt at a) joke on my part.

Also, I'm Irish, which is the reason I picked "Mick," but I'll delete the post if it's offensive.

That was just a (bad attempt at a) joke on my part.

Well, it did make me flash on a funny but HUGELY deliberately offensive line from Blazing Saddles (the one that ends "...but we don't want the Irish!"), so I wasn't sure if that was an actual title or not. Given some of the more offensive Hardy Boy stuff I've heard about, it wouldn't entirely surprise me.

I thought it was funny, Tep, and really that book held together much better than the Case of the Kriminal Kraut...cute spelling was the least of that one's problems.

I never read much Nancy Drew, but the thing that has always struck me as odd about Christie and Tey and Marsh mysteries is how taken for granted the idea that criminality was inborn is - I can remember at least a couple of Christie's where the culprit was the child of a murderer, for example, and that whole business about physiognomy in Daughter of Time, as much as I like the book, is impossible to swallow now.

I (also Irish) laughed at the Missing Mick.

I'm reading Kavalier and Clay on the bus but I get nauseated if I try to read while we're moving so I've got 20 little cliffhangers per day as I wait for the bus to stop rocking to read another line, paragraph or page before we start moving again.

I'll have to reread my copy of Daughter of Time now. It's been so long since I read it that I don't remember that detail.

Along the lines of a modern-day detective solving an historical mystery he stumbles across while in the hospital, I always liked Colin Dexter's The Wench Is Dead, one of his Inspector Morse books. The TV adaptation of it was all right, but I prefered the book, myself.

You don't remember that Kathy? Grant gets a series of portraits of the major player in the case and makes some judgements more or less based on those.

Oh, yeah, now that you mention it. I only read it the one time, and it's been a long while since I did. I have read the Dexter book since then, and I remember that one more.

Once I get the HP rereading finished, I think I'll get through the rest of my recent purchases (Ragtime and Fatherland, to be specific) before heading over to the library and seeing what else grabs my attention. I got out of the reading habit since March while I've been working on my sister's wedding present, and probably should get my To-Be-Read pile reduced a bit before starting on a cross-stitch piece for myself (the To-Be-Stitched box has been around for at least 15 years since I quit working at Michael's--it's not going anywhere!).