Envious Casca (1941)

The second last in my 2011 project of reading all of Georgette Heyer's mysteries, this was a fun read. It's an old-fashioned mystery of the locked room kind, complete with an old house, cantankerous victim, eccentric suspects and plenty of red herrings.

Heyer is not, in my view, the most talented of British Golden Age mystery writers. To my mind, that accolade goes to [a:Dorothy L. Sayers|8734|Dorothy L. Sayers|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1206564934p2/8734.jpg], although a number of other writers of the period also deserve high praise. That said, a Heyer mystery has its attractions. This one, like the others, has lots of style and is easy and undemanding to read. It also has some snappy dialogue and witty one-liners as well as an obligatory romance. While I guessed the identity of the culprit (with luck rather than through a deductive process), I didn't work out how the murder was done until seconds before the big reveal. This was a plus, because there's nothing I hate more in crime fiction than solving the mystery before the detective has come even close to working it out.

I re-read a number of Heyer's romances fairly regularly. They are amongst my favourite comfort reads. While I may not read the mysteries again, I've had lots of fun with them over the past few months. It has been particularly good to tackle this one as a buddy read with my friend Jemidar.

Recommended for Heyer completists and fans of British Golden Age crime fiction. For me this is was a 3-1/2 star read. ( )

Good, but I guessed the killer pretty quickly. ( )

It's Christmas time, and curmudgeonly Nathaniel Herriard has been cajoled into playing the host for a gathering of family and friends. A more inimical group of people could hardly be imagined, and tempers are running high . . . even before Nathaniel is found dead in his room, obviously murdered. Inspector Hemingway of Scotland Yard is called in to solve the case: who murdered Nathaniel Herriard (nearly everyone at the house party had a motive), and how did they do it, as the corpse was discovered in a locked room?

I have read several of Heyer's Regency romances, but this is the first of her mysteries that I have tackled. I liked the setting and the characters assembled at the house party, but thought the mystery was not as strong as others I've read. I also didn't care for Inspector Hemingway, who comes across as conceited -- he falls short in comparison to his contemporaries of the golden age of detective fiction: Lord Peter Wimsey, Hercule Poirot, Roderick Alleyn . . .

That's not to say that this wasn't worth reading -- I did enjoy it, and it took me perhaps longer than it should have to figure out who the murderer was. I'll probably read more of Heyer's detective stories in the future, but her real strength lies in romances, not mysteries. ( )

The English Christmas house party from Hell results in the death of the rich and choleric host. It's hard to choose which of the guests are unpleasant enough to be the murderer since they're nearly all unpleasant (but I like the ex-chorus girl whose practical self-absorbtion is somewhat refreshing.) I found this book somewhat ponderous and a little disappointing, but the solution is fairly clever. Hard starter, but ends well. ( )

Thoroughly enjoyable locked room murder mystery. Good levels of humor balanced off against the search to find the killer. Like so many of Heyer's crime novels, the story has much to say about the class system that was entrenched in England just prior to the second World War as well as the need at that time to either marry money or inherit it in order to maintain some level of comfort and status. Note: This one offers a number of good points of discussion for library book groups. ( )