No Wind of Blame

I love mysteries and enjoy many authors including Heyer. That being said, I found this rather tedious and I eventually lost interest in the characters -- a death knell for any book. I did finish it though but was not crazy about this one.

Classic Heyer. A good story with a neat twist at the end. If you like mysteries, you'll like this.

There's something about Georgette Heyer's mysteries that make me want to reread them even though I know I'll remember who the killer is somewhere through the book. The characters are so entertaining even though the mystery might not be up to the highest standards. From the back cover: No one cared that Wally Carter was dead. Certainly not fleshy Ermyntrude Carter, Wally's flamboyant wife. Good riddance to bad rubbish! As for Ermyntrude's impossibly intense teen-age daughter and Wally's vapid ward, Mary, the inheritance money was so consoling. Strong, silent, strange Robert Steel and tall, dark phony Prince Alexis Varasashvili danced graveside attendance on the overly merry widow, while shady Harold White (under-the-counter business partner of the deceased) heaved a sigh of relief. No one cared that Wally Carter was dead. Pity. But someone had cared enough to shoot him through the chest. Who the devil could it be? Asked absolutely super Inspector Hemmingway.

Michael Barnes does a stellar job of reading this book on the Chivers audiocassettes. His voices are perfect and very period (1930's England). And I actually caught things that I had not remembered from my first reading of this book a decade or so again. If Heyer does anything well she has an ear for slang. I laughed out loud when Wally Carter (who had just confessed to some very bad behavior) was complaining about the fact that his neice and step daughter had found out about the behavior by reading a letter addressed to him. "It's not," he said sternly, "the clean potato." Never heard that saying before. Then there is the Prince, not to be mistaken for Prince the dog, and the histrionic former actress turned lady of the manor, Ermintrude. I agree that Heyer seems to have changed sympathies in main stream, but how could one not rather spend time with the imaginative Vickie than Mary who does have Solid Worth but is not nearly as much fun.

This is one of Heyer's most complicated murder mysteries. It is absolutely stuffed full of red-herrings.As usual Heyer takes us to a classic English village, sometime in the 1930's, and into the home of Ermintrude, her daughter Vicki, Ermintrude's second husband Wally Carter and Wally's young relative - Miss Cliffe. Add to that mysterious Russian Princes, strange goings on in various shrubberies and unexpected shooting and you do have a very nice base for a mystery in the usual ironic Heyer-style.In classic Heyer way she also mixes in a little romance, but in very un-Heyer-like move she does a switch in the romance which never ceases to annoy me each time I read it. In the beginning we are made to think that Mary Cliffe is the lead heroine and Vicki, daughter of the singularly eccentric Ermintrude, as the flaky it-girl. Somewhere in mid-book things suddenly do a volte-face and we are expected to accept Vicki as the heroine....anyway...I don't know that this is one of Heyer's best mysteries, I rather like Behold Here's Poison - best - but it does deliver in wit and substance. It also offers a very satisfying mystery to try to work out.

Georgette Heyer was considered an excellent mystery writer when she began writing her stories in the 1930's. No wind of blame was written in 1939 and tells a neat story of murder and social manners of the time. There is an inspector and his superintendent, many clues spread throughout the story and a little love story all rolled into one. A great read if you enjoy English village mysteryies.