sloth

Go for it! Flashman develops entertainingly as a character, and George Macdonald Fraser is an excellent writer, as well as a very good historian - which does help with this sort of thing.

Bealsebub - I think the one you are remembering is either 'Playback' or 'The Lady in the Lake'. It's a while since I read either of them, but since they are the only ones that take place substantially or entirely outside LA, they seem the most likely ones for Marlowe to be travelling in a car.

Did your English teachers hate The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings? My current favourite (sort of) fantasy is a pair of books by Charles Stross called The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue. Imagine the world as it is, except that magic exists and is bound by mathematical rules, and there is a civil service bureauocracy dedicated to stopping people finding out. Oh yes, and H.P.Lovecraft was right.

Funnily enough, the only one of the 3 film versions I haven't seen is the 1959 one! Apparently it's a remake of the 1935 film starring Robert Donat, and if so it will have very little in common with the plot of the novel. The 1978 film starring Robert Powell as Richard Hannay is much closer to the John Buchan original. The book itself is fun. Someone (Julian Symons, I think, but I'm not sure) once wrote an article about the different types of detective fiction, and he used The 39 Steps as an example of what he called 'Now Get Out Of That.' That's about the best description of the plot I can think of - it's excellent escapism.

Poor Kate! Don't look at the rest of this post, then. I had a double-decker sandwich. Layer 1 - ham and dill pickle, layer 2 - turkey and coleslaw. Yum.

Hmm. 1. I am the oldest of a pair of non-identical twins. 2. I adore cats. 3. I teach Latin. 4. I am a volunteer reader for Librivox. 5. I am a member of the General Synod of the Church of England.

Definitely! Also Dashiell Hammett's creations, too.

In no particular order... Vanity Fair Pride and Prejudice The Moonstone Although I'm really much happier with things after 1920 or so...

I was a Puffin Club member too! One of my cousins used to work for Puffin, so we used to get parcels of Puffins from time to time. I'd forgotten all about Puffin Post. Do you remember there were Puffin Club badges too?

Could be 'Empty World' by John Christopher. There is an interesting pair of SF novels by John Brunner called 'Stand on Zanzibar' and 'The Sheep Look Up'. I don't know if either is still in print, but they are both set a few years into two very different but still dystopian futures.

Some of the more obscure 'Golden Age' detectives are entertaining. Max Carrados, (Ernest Bramagh) for example, who is blind but seemingly omniscient, and John Dickson Carr's characters Dr Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale. I also like Nigel Strangeways - created by Cecil Day-Lewis (writing as Nicholas Blake) and in his first outing based on the young W H Auden. My favourite of the classic ones, though, is Lord Peter Wimsey. Of more recent ones, I am a recent Pendergast convert too.

Try 'Shane' by Jack Schaefer - it's a fabulous novel. The John Wayne film 'The Shootist' was based on a novel of the same name by Glendon Swarthout. I've never read the book, but the film is exceptional, and books are usually better...

Tom Holt, who is best known for comic novels, is a Classicist by training, and has written some good historical novels set in the Ancient World. Try - The Walled Orchard, which was originally published in two parts as Goatsong and The Walled Orchard - Alexander At The World's End - Olympiad - Song for Nero - Meadowland He publishes these as Thomas Holt. I've read them all, and can thoroughly recommend them - especially 'The Walled Orchard' and 'Olympiad'. There's also Mary Renault - 'The Mask of Apollo' is about a Greek tragic actor. Hope that helps!