Am currently reading The Nine Tailors, which is a Lord Peter Wimsey story though you wouldn't know it from the blurbs. They do their best not to mention poor Peter in their praise of the book. I notice that the snapshot bio of Dorothy L. Sayers in the Penguin paperbacks of her translation of Dante spends a lot of time on her translations and her plays, and then says, "She is also the author of The Nine Tailors, a fascinating novel about campanology." Yeah, and To Kill A Mockingbird is about the practice of law in the South. Give me a break. Apparently Lord Peter has to gate-crash the Western Canon with a mild-mannered campanology party. Don't get me wrong, Sayers's academic stuff and her religious plays are very fine. But to imply strongly that detective novels aren't "serious" enough to be recognized as an author's achievement? Pernicious poppycock. I bite my thumb at the Canon.