Where the Posh Suspects Can't Stand Each Other

The Unfinished Clue by Georgette Heyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I liked this quite a bit. I'm already a sort of Heyer fan, so I was prepared to approve of it.

This book, for me, reads like an Agatha Christie novel, but with characters slightly more sympathetic. (I sometimes hate everyone in an Agatha Christie novel. I kinda liked a few of these characters here.) The setup is very similar: a murder has been done in such a way that a group of disparate people in company together (here it's the traditional country house) are all suspects, and all have a decent reason to want the guy dead. There's an emphasis on times, compiling the comings and goings of many people down to the minute, locating every character in time and place, to identify who had opportunity to commit murder. There's the cool, level-headed investigator getting testimony from everyone, deciding nothing until he has all the facts, while fuzzier thinkers accuse the wrong person again and again. And there's the surprising reveal with a twist.

A lot of this is very conventional, and that's fine as long as it's well-written, and IMO this is. The characters are varied and speak with their own unique voices, and the mystery is complex enough to be a puzzle but clear enough to make sense to the reader--without giving away the solution. You might guess what's up, or maybe half of it, but you can't really be sure until the very end. It works.

I'm pretty far from my starting point here. I started at Jane Austen, got directed to Georgette Heyer's somewhat similar Regency novels, and then found myself sliding into Heyer's mysteries. I'm a bit of a visitor here, genre-wise; I don't speak mystery like a native. But I enjoyed this, and I'll read others in a similar vein. I think I have another of her mysteries on my shelves.

Recommended for traditional mystery readers. Most of those folks probably already read this, but I'll recommend it anyway.

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