The Unfinished Clue (Country House Mysteries)

Though Georgette Heyer specialized in Regency romances, this one is Georgian, set in the 1770s. It's great fun. Horatia, the teenage heroine, talks a British earl twice her age into wedding her. It's what was known as a "marriage of convenience" -- a bargain in which the earl gets a wife and, presumably, an heir, and his bride's family gets a financial rescue. No love is involved on either side, but both husband and wife profess themselves to be well satisfied with the arrangement.

Of course, this being a romantic novel, this rather tepid union doesn't stay that way. Horatia's antics shock the Polite World, and the Earl, far from being the lazy aristocrat he appears, takes a hand in some intrigue. It's great fun, and the outcome isn't hard to guess.

I love Georgette Heyer's writing, and I think this is one of her best. Wonderful characters, a mystery, a romance or two.
Really enjoyed this book, there are always such interesting characters and personalities. Even if I guess 'who dunnit' which I did, I still love reading about the process. There are always complexities.

Penhallow is dying but not fast enough to prevent him from destroying all around him. There is nothing comedic in this tale of unhappy family relations, but Georgette Heyer fascinates all the same. The manners and morals of three generations of Cornish gentry are ably presented. The house, the furniture, the clothing of each of the characters are so atomospheric that you can almost detect the odor of rot beneath the polish. The mystery here is not whodunnit, but who will be blamed.

This was by far my least favorite of Georgette Heyer's books. After the promise of the first few chapters, I found Horatia to be an irritating twit and could not fathom why Lord Rule would have been in love with her.