Fashion Asia - Douglas Bullis - Paperback Book

I love this series. In Campion, Allingham created such a wonderfully strange and beautiful character. In this book, we meet his sister Val, a brilliant and talented fashion designer and we also learn a bit more about his family's history. In 1938, The New Yorker called this book "One of the finest murder books ever written." With that said, I need not add my own review. But I do have some comments I must make:

If you love Golden Age mysteries, please ignore the Goodreads reviewers who are damning this book for misogyny. It's a ridiculous way to read something from 1938. But beyond that, they are selecting quotations from the book to augment their arguments, while they are ignoring just as many sections of the book that describe the talent, ingenuity, self-made wealth, independence, success, and other incredible qualities of the same women. I'm not sure why it has become misogynistic to describe a woman's problems with men. My God. I've been a feminist for nearly 50 years. It hasn't changed the fact that I have often fallen in love with the "wrong men" and made ridiculous choices. I would hate to read a book in which none of the women had any less-than-ideal qualities or weaknesses or in fact in which none of the men held ridiculously old-fashioned male viewpoints. If we were reading for a university class called, for example, "Treatment of Women in Early 20th-Century Mysteries," then yes, let's write a full argument about the way the author treats her characters. But if you're reading for enjoyment, and can handle the way people behaved in the 1930s and 1940s, then read this incredible book for its characters, its plot, and its shocking and surprising climax.