Detection Unlimited - Book 25

This cover does not go with the story at all. Why do publishers do that?

I just finished my eighth Heyer mystery and, alas, I think it is the last one featuring Chief Inspector Hemingway.  I will miss his biting wit and disarming ways.  He was a fun character!  The title is Detection Unlimited because everyone in the little village is playing detective trying to figure out who among them shot the odious Sampson Warrenby; a newcomer who'd made lots of enemies.

There are tons of characters in this mystery.  A whole village full.  I had trouble keeping them clear in my head.  It took me about half way through the book before I was fairly confident in who was who.  But I don't know if that was Heyer's fault or the fact that I kept getting to bed too late and dozing off after about 3 minutes of reading.

Hemingway is his usual clever self.  Heyer writes such excellent fun dialogue and creates such lively characters and there is always some humor.  Hemingway himself is so sardonically witty in his sharp retorts and sudden self-deprecating remarks.  I enjoyed the unfolding of the plot and the steady way Hemingway, along with his dour assistant, kept chipping away, picking up clues from all the people and sifting through documents and evidence to get at the answer.

Heyer's husband was an attorney and they say she took her plots from stories he told.  This seems especially applicable in this particular novel.

Two thumbs up!  Goodbye Hemingway!  I really liked you!

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Duplicate Death - Book 24

Duplicate Death is the sixth book in Georgette Heyer's murder mystery series.  I read it back in 2015 and just finished rereading it as I move chronologically through them all.  I remembered this one pretty well, except for who had actually done it!  Because that's just me and my terrible memory.  But I remembered the characters were more sordid then usual and there are a couple of not nice words.

What I missed the last time I read it was that not only do we have Inspector Hemingway from the previous books on the case, but we also get to reconnect with three characters from They Found Him Dead.  It's been 13 years since Hemingway solved the mystery of the Kane murders.  Young Timothy Kane was 14 at the time and completely besotted with playing detective much to the amusement and annoyance of everyone.  But now he's grown and gone through World War II.  His older half-brother Jim made it through the war too, sans a leg, and is still happily married to Patricia.  They have two children they dote on.

Timothy has fallen in love with Beulah Birtley, a plucky young woman who has a past.  She hates being secretary to Mrs. Haddington, a grasping social climber who only cares about getting her beautiful daughter married to the richest and most prominent man she can.  But Cynthia Haddington is a spoiled, thoughtless child of 19.  Mrs. Haddington hosts a bridge party, only in the middle of it someone gets strangled while taking a phone call in the 'boudoir.' 

Lots of colorful characters, including a suspect who's gay.  I especially liked Hemingway's new assistant Inspector Grant who is Scottish and has a habit of annoying Hemingway by breaking into Gaelic all the time.  This story is more bleak than many others of Heyer's (an effect of living through WWII?) and the play between Hemingway and Grant supplies some nice comic relief. 

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks. 

Little Britches - Book 23

My husband read this book out loud to my middle son at least, maybe also the youngest one, this was about 12 or so years ago.  I don't even remember where I bought the book.  For that long of a time, I've been meaning to get around to reading it myself.  I vaguely knew what it was about.  Anyway, I finally read it!  It is one of those books I missed somehow in childhood and I wonder, how did this pass me by for so long? 

It is beautifully written account of a young boy and his poor family trying to establish a ranch in Colorado back in 1906 when he was eight years old.  The boy, Ralph, is the second oldest of a family of six children.  He's the oldest boy though.  His father got lung disease from working a woolen factory in New Hampshire and so the family tries its luck out west where the air is supposed to be better.  This reminded me of a book I read earlier in the year of a woman reporter traveling around Colorado territory in the late 1800s by horseback.  She met many people who had moved to the area because of lung issues.

Ralph's family is a warm and hard working family unit.  They are frugal, joyful, intelligent, faithful and loving.  Ralph is all boy and is forever doing things that are just a little bit more dangerous than his mother (and father) would like him to do.  He loves horses though and has a gift with them.  He gets many jobs trying to help earn money for the family.  He herds a rather unpleasant neighbor's dairy cows.  He and his father help a really kind and wonderful neighbor with haying.  He winds up working the summer of his 10th year as a cowhand (but really a water boy) at a big ranch where he can only come home on some weekends.  But there he makes friends with a real cowboy, Hi, who teaches him many things.

There is lots of peril from a horrible wind storm to rancher thugs shooting at the family over an irrigation ditch dispute.  Ralph's love for his father is touching and wonderful.  The book packs an emotional wallop.

Two thumbs up!  I plan to try to read the whole series (I think there may be eight books in total?).

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Hercule Poirot's Christmas - Book 22

I read this book to compare it to Envious Casca because both are mysteries of the English-country-house-at-Christmas-murdered-body-found-in-locked-room genre.  I thought that I had read this particular Poirot before.  But apparently Christie wrote a few Christmas mysteries with Poirot.  So maybe what I actually read was a short story.  Anyway, it wasn't this particular mystery novel.  And it turns out that even though both the Heyer mystery and the Christie mystery are of the same narrow genre, sharing many of the basic elements, they are quite different stories!

A further element the two books shared was that the murdered person was the rich patriarch whose children are anxious about what he's leaving them in his will.  And this patriarch is not a pleasant person in either book.  However, Heyer's Nathaniel Harriad is irritable and argumentative, but underneath not an evil sort.  Contrast that with Simeon Lee who really is a nasty, nasty sort of person.  Also the murderer turns out to be completely different people with completely different motives.  And the mystery of how the murder was committed in a locked room is also completely different.

While I enjoyed the Christie book and I acknowledge she is universally celebrated as the queen of murder mysteries, I have to say I rather like Heyer's writing style better!  Christie can be a bit clunky in her dialogue or how she builds the background for the characters and situation.  I think Heyer handles that more gracefully  And Heyer manages to be laugh out loud funny at times too.

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Envious Casca - Book 21

This book was a re-read for me.  I know I've read Envious Casca fairly recently.  So recently, I actually remembered the murderer, which is pretty good for me, who can never remember a punchline to a joke or the conclusion of a mystery for very long.  However, I looked back at all my Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks which I have been keeping since 2011 and I could not find Envious Casca listed anywhere!  I am sure I read it and I really thought I had written a review for the 52 Book Challenge, but alas, I can not find it anywhere.  So I must have forgotten to count it.  I bet I wrote a draft that I never got around to publishing.  I don't feel like combing through my very long list of unpublished posts, so I'll rely on my assumption.

Anyway, second time around, even knowing who actually did the murder, it was still a thumping good read.  And now I think the next book I read will be Poirot's Christmas.  I know it is odd to be planning to read Christmas books in June, but Envious Casca is set on Christmas Eve.  Agatha Christie wrote her story in 1938.  Envious Casca was written in 1941 and I think Heyer was playing off of Christie's story.  Even the title which comes from Shakespeare kind of riffs off of Christie's opening of her Christmas murder mystery with a quote from MacBeth.  Only Envious Casca is from Julius Caesar.  Also the main suspect is named Stephen in both.  And most astonishingly, the murder in both books takes place in a locked room so no one can figure out how to the murderer got in or out.

Here's a link to a review of Envious Casca, which is interesting, though I don't think I actually agree with some of it.

Another good read from Georgette Heyer!  For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

No Wind of Blame - Book 20

I'm moving through the Georgette Heyer mysteries like munching through a bag of potato chips!

No Wind of Blame did not disappoint.  This time the rich landowner is Ermyntrude a chorus girl from the second row who married a rich first husband who left her everything when he died.  She's moved to the country to try to fit in with the landed upper crust to help her only daughter, Vicky land a rich husband too.  But of course, though kind-hearted, she's witless.  She's married again, a good looking hanger on, who's turned to seed and become an alcoholic.  Not a pleasant husband.  His ward though is nice, Mary Cliffe, and we sort of see the whole mystery from her point of view.  Ermyntrude hosts a shooting party weekend but her husband winds up being shot.  Who did the dastardly deed (although no one is sorry to see Wally dead)?  Could it be the foreign Russian prince, ousted by the Bolsheviks and now, in exile, angling for a rich wife?  Or the neighboring farmer, who has been in love with Ermyntrude since he moved in next door?  Meanwhile there are subtle romances going on among the younger characters, but will the right people end up with the right match? 

I thought the plot to this one was especially clever. Very enjoyable!

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

A Blunt Instrument - Book 19

Next, chronologically, in Georgette Heyer's murder mysteries (all written in the 1930s - 1940s) that I am currently plowing through, is A Blunt Instrument.  This one was wonderful and I guessed correctly whodunit!  Maybe guessed is too strong a word, because I don't have that much confidence in my sleuthing abilities, but I did register a strong suspicion which proved to be correct.

Inspector Hannasyde and his sidekick Detective Hemingway try to puzzle out who hit Ernie Fletcher over the head with a blunt instrument while he sat at his desk in his study.  Turns out Fletcher had a seedy side to him and lots of people were coming in and out of that study that night.  And then halfway through the book, just as the two intrepid detectives think they are on to something, their prime suspect gets murdered too.

There's a lot of fun, eccentric characters, including a scripture quoting policeman on steroids.  The way Hemingway and Neville Fletcher, the nephew, interact with him is laugh out loud funny.  Really clever.  Heyer had to do a lot of mining for obscure Old Testament quotes for this one.

A really fun book I read in 3 days.  Two thumbs up!

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.