One of the Golden Age (and slightly later) authors whom I feel has been quite unjustly neglected lately is Georgette Heyer. She's still known primarily as a writer of period romances, but she also wrote a dozen classic mysteries, and she wrote them with style and grace. I've reviewed a number of her books on the Classic Mysteries podcast. Here's a review of one of my favorites among her works: Envious Casca. Here's what I had to say about the book, several years back. As always, I've edited a few things, including revising the information about the book's availability nowadays:
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Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing to hold a family reunion over the Christmas holidays? A time when family members and friends get together for a little old-fashioned celebration. Of course, the head of the family is a tyrannical and bad-tempered old man. His brother is a wooly-headed optimist. His nephew matches the old man in personality and temper AND is engaged to a pure gold-digger. His niece is an actress who wants him to pour money into an awful new play by an unknown author. His business partner is engaged in some shady deals. What could possibly go wrong? That’s the situation we find in Envious Casca, by Georgette Heyer.
When we remember Georgette Heyer as an author today, it is primarily for her historical novels and her regency romances, books that are quite charming in their way but hardly mysteries. But Georgette Heyer also wrote a dozen thrillers. Critics and students of Golden Age mysteries differ on the overall quality of the thrillers – but there’s general agreement that one of the best of them is the book Envious Casca, originally published in 1941. It combines some interesting characters with a great deal of humor – and it throws in an excellent locked-room murder as well.
As Envious Casca opens, we meet Joseph Herriard. He’s a former actor, now retired, who has brought his wife to live at Lexham Manor, the country house owned by his older – and much wealthier – brother, Nathaniel. Joseph is an incurable optimist, always eager to see the best in anyone. He has been plotting to bring together a normally hostile collection of relatives and friends for what he is sure will be an old-fashioned family Christmas. Somehow, he succeeds in bringing everyone together and gathering them at the family estate. His hopes for family togetherness, however, are not going to succeed.
Old Nathaniel Herriard, Joseph’s older brother, is a bad-tempered and tyrannical person who probably should never have let his younger brother talk him into inviting everyone to Lexham. His nephew, Stephen, arrives with his young, not very smart gold-digger fiancée. Stephen’s sister, Paula, who is an actress, comes to the party with a young man who has written a new (and pretty awful) play; Paula wants her rich uncle to finance the play. Not likely. Paula and Stephen inherit their uncle’s bad temper, which doesn’t help the overall atmosphere a bit. There is another, more distant, cousin on hand, named Maud Clare. There is old Nathaniel’s business partner, who also seems to quarrel with the old man. And there are a variety of other characters, all of whom appear to be very much at odds with each other. The bottom line, of course, is that virtually everyone present probably could have had a good reason for murder – and, when that murder happens, there are plenty of suspects.
Unfortunately for the police, the murder is one of those impossible crimes – the victim is found stabbed to death inside a locked room, with no weapon in sight. So the police, represented eventually by Scotland Yard detective inspector Hemingway, must not only figure out who killed the victim – but how the crime could have been committed at all.
Now if what I’ve been describing to you sounds like a collection of clichés and stereotypes, you might have a point. But beware. Georgette Heyer may present what seem to be stereotypical characters – but she will then surprise you and present different evidence that can radically change your opinion of those characters and their behavior. The locked room murder is quite ingenious – yet quite fairly solved, and the reader is given a series of hints, many of which are very cleverly hidden in the story.
Heyer is also genuinely funny in a lot of her descriptions, and I found myself laughing out loud at some of it. At one point after the murder, for example, the mother of Stephen’s gold-digging fiancée arrives on the scene to comfort her daughter:
“My little girl mustn’t let her nerves run away with her,” said Mrs. Dean bracingly. “Who could possibly want to murder you, my pet?” A glance at Stephen’s face might have provided her with a possible answer, but happily she did not look in his direction.
I enjoyed Envious Casca. I liked the way the characters developed from the stereotypical country-house-mystery types into very different individuals. I enjoyed the locked room murder, which, as I say, was well- and fairly-clued. And I very much liked the humor. Envious Casca remains available in both print and electronic editions.
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You can listen to the complete audio review by clicking here.
Next: Double for Death, by Rex Stout - NOT a Nero Wolfe story!
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