However I find myself in reluctant agreement with Steven Riddle's distaste for the bulky novel Gaudy Night on his blog Flos Carmeli. Perhaps we should, as a commenter suggests, rename the book A Clutch of Harpies. Or perhaps that's too strong. I don't mind the characters as much as I do the waste of several hundred pages spent tracking down the irrelevant perpetrator of a trivial crime. Come to think of it, perhaps what bothers me the most is that Sayers seems to care more about promoting academic vocations for women than about developing an engaging plot. It's evocative of a Susan Sarandon movie in which perfectly good celluloid is wasted on attacking a Big, Bad Industry rather than developing a ripping good story and characters with whom I want to be involved.
So, there you have it. Roz as harpy.
