nineveh_uk

This particularly annoying moment comes towards the end of A Presumption of Death*, a couple of pages after Peter has declared that he would prefer his children to be labelled "middle class of Paggleham" in the same sentence as saying that of course they'll need a good education. I really cannot stand the "Peter and Harriet play middle-class" quality of the JPW books (a problem, to be fair, that is not isolated in these continuations, but found in practically every faux Golden Age mystery novel**), which elides those class and other social attitudes the modern author presumably finds problematic, replacing them with a load of new assumptions that are more infuriating for being the product of now rather than an interesting socio-cultural artefact of then.

*The presumption presumably being a lower-class character daring to die at a time inconvenient to the powers that be.

**The honorable exception being the first book, at least (I've not read the next), of Catriona McPherson's, After the Armistice Ball.

( But it’s a bit of a poser, don’t you know )