Gaudy Night

Not much of a work of detective fiction, but as the climax of the Harriet Vane storyline (which continued in a denouement with Busman's Honeymoon), it is excellent. The story sort of meanders around the actual problem, dealing variously with Harriet's infatuation with the possibility of escape into an academic life, with her problem with writing a novel that reveals her own feelings, with her interactions with Peter over the years since Have His Carcase, with life at a women's college in the 1930s, and with the problems of devoted love. The scene before Peter's last proposal, the sort of tying up of loose emotional ends, seemed awkward, too overly stated, but the simplicity (and hesitance) of the final proposal was good. A lot of literary allusions went right over my head. And yet this is one of the rare novels that I can open up at any spot and enjoy for a small piece, or (more likely) read a bit and then have to start at the beginning – or, better still, start again with Strong Poison and work my way onward.