Ugh, okay, so obviously I love this one because it's such an amazing payoff for the buildup.
Let's not talk about that though.
What's so interesting about returning to this story over 10 (probably longer) years since first reading it is my relationship to the scholarship and the women scholars who populate it - the questions of love, of honesty, of intellectual rigor, of - God help us all - work/life balance, of the role of women and the way we are obligated to present ourselves.
And some of it is clearly of its time and some of this debate is so obviously timeless. And the background of Oxford as a way of Harriet working out what SHE needs and what balance looks like and what she wants and the very idea of partnership.
There is so much here, to the point that while it is ostensibly a mystery novel, what Sayers has done here is written an extraordinary book about being human and honesty and just lightly wrapped a mystery around it.
It delights me to no end.