Who is Vicky Bliss?
In her own words:
When I was ten years old, I knew I was never going to get married. Not only was I six inches taller than any boy in the fifth grade-except Matthew Finch, who was five ten and weighed ninety-eight pounds-but my IQ was as formidable as my height. It was sixty points higher than that of any of the boys-except the aforesaid Matthew Finch. I topped him by only thirty points.
I know-this isn't the right way to start a narrative, if I hope to command the sympathy of the reader. A narrator should at least try to sound modest. But believe me, I'm not bragging. The facts are as stated, and they are a handicap, not a cause for conceit. If there is anything worse than being a tall girl, it is being a tall smart girl.
For several years my decision didn't give me much pain. I wasn't thinking seriously of marriage in the fifth grade. Then I reached adolescence, and the trouble began. I kept growing up, but I grew in another dimension besides height. The results were appalling. I won't quote my final proportions; they call to mind one of those revolting Bunnies in Playboy. I dieted strenuously; but that only made matters worse. I got thin in all the right places and I was still broad where, as the old classic says, a broad should be broad.
Mind you, I am still not bragging. I am not beautiful. I admire people who are slender and fine-boned and aesthetic-looking. The heroine of my adolescent daydreams had a heart-shaped face framed in clouds of smoky black hair. She was a tiny creature with an ivory complexion and a rosebud mouth. When she was enfolded in the hero's brawny arms, her head only reached as high as his heart.
All my genes come from my father's Scandinavian ancestors-big blond men with rosy cheeks and blazing blue eyes. They were about as aesthetic-looking as oxen. That's what I felt like-a big, blond, blue-eyed cow.
(from Borrower of the Night, E. Peters 1973)
In this first of her adventures Vicky Bliss finds herself in Germany where she meets the head of a museum of art in Munich, Anton Schmidt, who offers her a job as his assistant. From then on this is the center or the starting point of her 'cases' which deal with some mysterious art object or other.
Vicky is a trained art historian of nevermentioned age (or did I overlook it?). I'd say she is 30 to 35 during the course of the series (other opinions?). The most important man in her life (except the everpresent Hr. Schmidt) is the nearly neverpresent, very misterious Sir John, who is one of the few to match her witts.
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