Lord John in New York

The worst thing about terrible mystery novels — the kind where the hero judges everyone on the most shallow grounds imaginable, and every tenuous connection is treated as a solid deduction — is that you can make fun of the hero all you want for assuming the Egyptian guy he’s found in the phone book (apparently this is a phone book that sorts by nationality?) is the same mysterious Egyptian guy who might have upset the girl he’s fallen in love at first sight with, but in the end you know the hero is going to be proven right.

The Sheik

If you’re triggered by discussions of rape, please don’t read this book, and consider giving this post a pass as well.

Every single time in the past five years that I’ve read a book where the relationship between the hero and the heroine was kind of abusive, or a man failed to treat a woman as a person with a life of her own, or rapist-like behavior was meant to be cute, or a woman was punished for being attractive or for acting like a man, I’ve though, “Well, at least it’s not The Sheik.”

The Sheik is all of those things and more. Basically, if you can think of a gross thing early 20th century authors do to women, it’s here — except, to be fair, that thing where any woman whose virtue has been impugned in any way must die. It’s pretty awful.