Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Envious Casca - Georgette Heyer

I like to read Christmas-themed mysteries at Christmas & I planned to read Envious Casca last Christmas. However, I didn't get to it, I read J Jefferson Farjeon's Mystery in White instead. I'm not sure what made me pick up Envious Casca last week & make it my lunchtime book, but I did. It's a well-plotted murder mystery with the requisite nasty victim & cast of plausible suspects & I enjoyed it very much.

Nathaniel Herriard is a rich but miserable man. He lives at Lexham Manor with his brother, Joseph & his wife, Maud. Joseph is an out-of-work actor who loves to talk about his great roles but was really only ever a character actor. Maud is quiet & colourless, her only enthusiasm is her love of reading royal biographies, the more romantic & tragic the life, the more she enjoys it. Joseph has decided to bring the family together for Christmas, against Nathaniel's wishes as he hates Christmas. Nat & Joseph's nephew, Stephen & his sister, Paula are invited. Stephen is presumed to be his uncle's heir but the two have an abrasive relationship. Stephen has just become engaged to pretty, empty-headed Valerie Dean, a young woman that Nat has taken an instant dislike to. Paula is an actress & is desperate to borrow money from her uncle to put on a play written by Willoughby Roydon, a young man who writes serious plays about the sordid underbelly of modern life. Unsurprisingly none of his plays have been produced. Paula is excited about his new play because he's written a perfect part for herself. Nat's business partner, Edgar Mottisfont & Mathilda Clare, a cousin of the Herriads, make up the party.

Despite Joseph's desire to keep the party on an even keel, the cracks soon begin to appear. The guests arrive on Christmas Eve &, almost immediately, Nathaniel is rude to Valerie, who dislikes the house & its atmosphere. Stephen seems to be having second thoughts about his engagement anyway as he's rude to Valerie & abrasive with his uncle. Paula pushes everyone into hearing Roydon read his play & is then upset when Nathaniel is offended by the content. It seems it won't be so easy to get the money from Nathaniel & Roydon is upset because Paula had told him she would get the money as her inheritance so why shouldn't she have it now? Unfortunately she hadn't taken her uncle's disposition into account. Nathaniel has a meeting with Edgar Mottisfont which leaves Edgar furious & frightened. Then, Maud's copy of The Life of the Empress Elizabeth goes missing & Joseph & Mathilda have a hard time keeping the peace.

When the party assemble for dinner on Christmas Eve, they're all upset or angry to some degree. When Nathaniel doesn't appear, Joseph & Ford, the valet, go up to his room. The door's locked &, after calling Stephen to help, they break in, finding Nathaniel dead on the floor. It soon becomes apparent that he's been stabbed in the back. However, the door & windows were all locked &, apart from a tiny window in the bathroom, there seems no way a murderer could have escaped. The local police are called & then Inspector Hemingway of Scotland Yard arrives to take over the baffling case.

Envious Casca is a very good mystery, with almost everyone in the house party having a motive. As Inspector Hemingway puts it, "Here I've got no fewer than four hot suspects, and three possibles, all without alibis, and most of them with life-size motives, and I'm damned if I see my way to bringing it home to any of them." The locked room & the absence of a weapon is another twist in the tale. None of the house guests is particularly sympathetic, although I did like Mathilda Clare, a plain (or ugly, as Valerie Dean keeps emphasizing) thirtyish spinster with a dry sense of humour. I got to the solution ahead of the detectives but it was more to do with my knowledge of history than spotting any other clues. I liked Inspector Hemingway, he's intelligent & clever at choosing the right manner when questioning his suspects, from flirting with Valerie Dean to refusing to take umbrage when the very superior butler Sturry (who tends to speak in Capital Letters) turns his nose up at the police & sees the murder as a personal affront.

According to Jennifer Kloester's biography of Heyer, she had a very hard time writing the book, which was originally called Christmas Party. It was 1940, her brother-in-law was killed in action in May & she was upset & preoccupied by the news of the war. She had also just published The Spanish Bride & was worried by the opinion of some readers (including her mother) that her regular readers wouldn't enjoy it as much as her usual, lighter, books. She also felt that the subject matter - another European war, even though it was over a hundred years earlier - was ill-timed. Every time she tried to work on the mystery, she wanted to be writing a light romance instead. I also loved the anecdote in the biography that, after trying various titles for the book, she thought that Envious Casca would be a good title & assumed that everyone would recognize the allusion to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar & not be too annoyed that the number of stab wounds in the murders was different.

Envious Casca is about to be reprinted with the original title, A Christmas Party, in time for Christmas this year. I think there's also a nod to the very successful British Library Crime Classics in the cover art of the reprint. The BLCC series has a new Christmas book out as well, a collection of short stories, Silent Nights, selected by Martin Edwards. My copy is on its way. There's also a reprint of an earlier BLCC title, The Santa Klaus Murder, with a new cover (a great improvement on the hideous cover it had when first published a few years ago). I doubt the British Library Crime Classics would be so successful if they hadn't come up with that gorgeous cover art based on railway posters. All the earlier titles have been reprinted with covers in this style & I'm sure their sales must have improved.

Anglophilebooks.com A copy of Envious Casca is available at Anglophile Books.

14 comments:

  1. I remember that some of the Angela Thirkell group members tempted us to read Georgettte Heyer's mysteries and this one was kept for Christmas time. We all discovered the murderer well before the incestigators but we all enjoyed the book and, generally speaking, the mysteries better than the romances.
    I agree with you about the British Library Crime Classics: their lovely covers are a great asset to their publishing and sales! Why not? This is so pleasant to handle a nice book.

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    1. Yes, I think the BLCCs have proved that a well-produced, attractive book is still something to be coveted. I believe the paperback sales of some of their titles have outstripped the eBook versions.

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  2. I was recently touring an exhibit on the Hapsburg Empire with some fellow Heyer readers, and we all stopped in front of one painting (and its label) and said, "Envious Casca!" When I first read this, I didn't know enough about them to spot the major clue. I do like Mathilda! Paula and her playwright crack me up every time.

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    1. She does write beautiful social comedy, whatever the period, doesn't she?

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  3. This is the only one which I haven't tracked down, I've read all the others, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I love that cover too.

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    1. I'm sure I read all the Heyer mysteries when I was a teenager but that's so long ago that I don't remember anything about them. It was like reading a new mystery!

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  4. I haven't read any Georgette Heyer for ages, but this sounds lovely. I must see if I can track down a copy in time for Christmas.

    The BLCC covers are lovely, and, quite unusually, I've been able to see them in real life before buying as W H Smith has a display unit full of them. I'm hoping they sell lots of them, and it encourages them to take a chance on some more small/specialist presses.

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    1. Yes, the more small publishers are promoted in bookshops, the better. It's another reason why we need bookshops. Online is great when you know what you want but it doesn't always give you that discoverability that you get in a good bookshop.

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  5. Envious Casca is one of my favourite Heyers and favourite mysteries. I reread it faithfully every Christmas because I love the interaction between the characters, and the wry comments that get tossed around.

    When my old paperback copy (with tiny tiny print) finally fell apart, I bought a lovely old hardback with dust jacket to replace it.

    Hmmm, reissuing it under a different title. I suspect a LOT of Heyer fans might turn to murderous thoughts when they acquire it and find out the truth.

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    1. The Amazon listing prominently mentions that ACP was also EC but I don't know how obvious it is on the actual book.

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  6. Was just thinking about re reading this as well, I got very excited when I saw the new cover, briefly thinking it might be a new (to me) book. Sadly not the case but it's a while since I read any of her detective novels and I remember them being fun.

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    1. I'd like to reread her other detective novels too. I tried the audio book version of EC but didn't like the narrator & she narrates all the audio books so I'll be reading rather than listening to them.

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  7. You know, Lyn, it's a funny thing. I read this a while back but I simply cannot remember anything about it. Your review brought back a glimmer (well, there are MANY books with this sort of plot so that's not saying much - ha!) which makes me want to find the book on my shelves and give another reread. I think the first time around I wasn't that crazy about it though in general, I love Georgette Heyer and just about anything she does, including her mysteries. Which, by the way, are a delight to listen to on audio.

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    1. I read all the Heyer mysteries many years ago so they're like brand new books after this distance in time. I think the mysteries have been a little neglected so it would be good to read them again.

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