Sweet Silver Blues (Glen Cook)

I've heard good things about the Garrett, P.I. series and I'm interested in fantasy, so I thought I'd give it a try, starting with this, the first book of the series. It's a fairly standard noir PI novel, set in a magical world of vampires, pixies, centaurs, witches, and trolls. The writing is solid and the action interesting, but I couldn't get into it. Part of the problem is the breathtaking sexism. Granted, the story is 25 years old, but even in 1990 this should have been too much. There are exactly three female characters that appear in more than one scene. One is a literal witch, complete with haggard face, shrieking cackle, and mysterious omens. One is a figurative bitch, beautiful but stupidly, mindlessly nasty to everyone and everything. The other is a lovely and willing wench with nary a brain. That's it. This spoiled the whole thing for me. If it's not a problem for you, you might well enjoy this start to what is a popular series.