After several heavy duty novels recently, I decided I’d had enough of literature and reread an author that fits into the “old reliable” category.
My favourite author is Georgette Heyer, who began her writing career a century or so ago. Her most successful genres are historical romance and detective fiction. She also wrote some contemporary fiction that betray her prejudices horribly and are best skipped over.
She was writing her murder mysteries in the golden age of crime fiction, at the same time as such luminaries as Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayer, and of course Agatha Christie (who coincidentally also wrote romantic fiction under a different name). I’m sure I’ve written about all this before so this is a recap.
The book I’m reading now is called “Footsteps in the dark”, written in 1932. There is passing mention of what various of the male characters did in “the war”, with obviously no idea of what would come again in seven years time. Chilling.
The book is one of those set in a big country house near a tiny village, with a limited cast so that you can try to work out “whodunnit”, although I never can. I always suspect every character in turn, exactly as the author intended.
At one point the occupants of the house are invited to a neighbours for dinner. This house was built in Victorian times, and is therefore “modern”, having fabulous new tech such as “electricity”.
Of course Queen Victoria would have only died around thirty years before, so it’s like a 1970’s (or even newer) house for us.
A bit further on, the author lets slip some of those pesky snobbish values that we’d prefer to stay hidden. I’m sure her attitudes were typical of your upper middle class English person of her day, but it still grates. Here the heroine falls in love with a tall, dark, and handsome but mysterious stranger. But, she declares that she’d love him no matter what – even if he is a criminal – as long as he doesn’t “smell of the shop”.
I have also learned a new word! Not that it’s one I’m likely to see elsewhere as it seems to be a slang word of the period.
A stumer is a worthless cheque or counterfeit coin or note ( foreshadowing!) or a failure. Rude.