Every family has secrets, but the Fountains' are turning deadly…

On a dark night, along a lonely country road, barrister Frank Amberley stops to help a young lady in distress and discovers a sports car with a corpse behind the wheel, dead from a gunshot wound. Shirley Brown protests her innocence, and Amberley believes her -- at least until he gets drawn into the mystery and the clues incriminating the girl begin to add up… The new heir to Norton Manor discovered the difficulty of keeping decent help when the butler got murdered on his night off. But why would anyone shoot a trusted old family retainer?

The bumbling police are well-meaning but completely baffled. Fortunately, barrister turned amateur sleuth Frank Amberley, is as brilliant as he is arrogant. He has a couple of suspects in mind, the nervy young lady discovered at the scene of the crime and the snooping gentleman in the halls of Greythorne, when suddenly there's a second body. In this dramatic tale of upstairs, downstairs and family secrets, Amberley, although he wants to discover the desperate killer, this time he's not sure he wants to know the truth… ( )

Classic 1930s mystery - holds up well, and still fun. ( )

Frank Amberley is intrigued when he comes upon a dead man in a car on a country road, with a young lady standing nearby, a young lady whom he unaccountably doesn’t mention to the police when reporting the incident. He is on his way to visit his aunt, but he soon meets up with an old school friend who is visiting at another stately home in the area, the home of his fiance. When it turns out that the dead man was the butler at said home, Amberley begins to wonder what might have been going on, and since he’s had some success at solving puzzles, he starts to look into it all…. This is one of the “country house mysteries” written by Georgette Heyer, this one published in 1933, and it’s both amusing and somewhat horrifying - the former because of the witty banter slung around, the latter because of the general attitude of all the main characters with respect to their servants, very dismissive. As, of course, one can tell by the title. I quite enjoyed the story for what it was, keeping in mind that attitudes 90 years ago were, well, quite different to today; and Amberley, a clever young man, is both just rude enough and just curious enough to figure it all out; mildly recommended. ( )

Ugh. First off, the narrator was awful. She sounded like an android reading this book, with weird pauses in the middle of the sentences and almost no inflection. Her voice is lovely, but she did a hatchet job on the narration. It did improve by the end, but too late to make me forget how painful the first half of the book was.

Additionally, Amberley is an ass. Perhaps back in the day he came across witty and insouciant but I just got ass. He felt like a slightly older Bright Young Thing. He didn't try to hide his contempt for the local constabulary (who were all, admittedly, written as idiots) or his perceived superiority over just about everybody.

Amberley is on his way to his uncle's house when he comes across a car pulled over on the side of a dark road, the driver shot dead in his seat and a young woman standing in the road beside him. She won't tell him anything but convinces him to let her go. When he reports the crime he chooses not to tell the police about her presence. The murder victim is revealed to be the butler for the estate next door and the constabulary enlist his help in investigating what they believe to be an unsolvable crime. He proceeds to rub their noses in his superiority, while constantly haranguing the young woman to Reveal All.

The final nail in the coffin was the ending:
After Amberley saves Shirley from death, and after an entire book in which he never, ever says anything even remotely nice to her, he proposes marriage - if you can it a proposal. "Will you marry me or not?". I don't know what's worse: that he thinks he has basis for asking or that she actually accepts!

I quite liked Footsteps in the Dark as it had at least an air of farce to it, not to mention a "ghost" story, and I loved The Grand Sophy. I knew from previous reviews that Heyer could be hit or miss, so I'm not surprised I hit on a low one. But I won't be trying any more of her mysteries on audio, as it seems every one of them are narrated by the same woman. ( )

An accidental re-read, but an enjoyable one. As I started reading it, I remembered my frustration the first time around with the slow, purposefully vague start, but once into it, I enjoyed the banter and the mystery again - and had no recollection as to whodunnit. ( )