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A_THING_OF_WIND_AND_LIGHT

    "Sharon's frigid and easy grace dominated
   that red hung room.  Her face was quite
   expressionless now, and the black eyelashes
   flickered over cool, impersonal eyes.  She
   became a thing of wind and light; that is
   the only way it can be described.  Taking a
   cigarette from a silver box on a tabouret,
   very calmly, she lighted it and closed the
   lid of the box with a snap."

                  "The Lost Gallows" (1931)
                  by John Dickson Carr
                  Chapter 12 "The Mirth of the Murderer", p. 137

  And there you have
  the Modern Woman         A few years later, Carr had lost
  of the twenties...       interest in such things, and began
                           writing about Very British Nice
       (This               Girls (though almost always Good
       "Sharon             Sports), and not very plucky ones,
       Grey"               either.  Here we see the pendulum
       character           swinging against the Modern:
       was reused
       from "It            "This apology should come from that fact that
       Walks by            on one point all the leading authorities are
       Night"              agreed: to introduce a heroine (whether or
       in 1930.)           not the tale be fact) is bad.  Very bad.  As
                           Henry Morgan says, you know what I mean: the
                           gray-eyed, fearless Grace Darling with the
                           cool philosophy, who likes to poke her nose
                           into trouble and use a gun as well as the
                           detective, and who requires the whole book to
                           make up her mind whether she is more than
                           casually interested in the hero."

                               John Dickson Carr (addressing the reader)
                               "The Eight of Swords" (1934)
                               Chapter 8 "At the Chequers Inn", p.93





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