No Wind of Blame (by Georgette Heyer)

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In my gradual re-reading of Georgette Heyer’s mid-20th century crime novels, I reached ‘No Wind of Blame’, which I first read in 2018. I had almost no memory of the book or any of the characters, other than a faint memory of how the crime was committed. 

The book is mainly set in a stately home owned by a flamboyant and very wealthy woman called Ermyntrude. She was widowed some years earlier, and then remarried the impoverished Wally Carter, who appears to have very few redeeming qualities. However he is apparently irresistible to many women, despite being a spendthrift, and regularly drunk. 

Wally has a cousin who is also his ward, Mary Cliffe. She’s one of the central characters, full of common sense and diplomacy. She's one of the few people who feels entirely real without any exaggeration or caricature. Mary is quite a contrast to Ermyntrude’s daughter Vicky, who sees life as a series of vignettes. Vicky constantly sees herself as acting a part. She regularly dresses and behaves in different parts of a play that is going on in her mind. She’s sometimes quite amusing, but Mary mostly finds her annoyingly trite and somewhat naive. 

There are others, too: the Georgian Prince who has come to stay; the local doctor; a squire and his son Hugh who is quite attracted to Mary. But she finds him rather too frivolous. There are less likeable folk as well, such as a belligerent young man who wants Wally to take responsibility for seducing his sister, or so he claims; a rather encroaching close neighbour who pops in far more frequently than Ermyntrude likes.  

So there are a lot of people in this novel, and quite a few different subplots running alongside each other, confusing the local police when a crime is committed - and it doesn’t happen until nearly half-way through the book. Nobody is all that upset about the loss of the character who is shot, but everyone tells either half-truths or downright lies in their attempts to cover up what they think they might know. 

Yet Heyer’s characterisation is such that almost all the people in the book stand out, and I didn’t find the large cast-list at all confusing. There’s low-key humour here and there, and I was pleased when Scotland Yard is called in, as Inspector Hemmingway is the person on the scene. He has appeared in several of the earlier crime fiction books, but usually as a sidekick of Superintendent Hannasyde. In this novel, Hannasyde only appears at the end of the phone; it’s Hemmingway who interviews the suspects and others in the household and neighbourhood. And I love the way his mind works. 

The viewpoint changes quite rapidly in this novel, but whereas that can make writing seem awkward, it works well in this novel. We learn just enough from each person’s point of view to know how they’re feeling, but not whether they are or are not guilty; we don’t even learn who might know of the perpetrator. 

Despite my vague memory of how the crime was committed, I had forgotten the details. It seems increasingly difficult to see just how it happened, and who might have done it, as more and more information comes to light. Even when I was fairly sure, I was puzzled by the motivation; yet that’s something that I should have been able to work out, based on a few casual remarks earlier in the novel.

I don’t like Heyer’s crime fiction as much as I like some of her historical romances, but I thought this was well-written, cleverly plotted and with memorable characters even if some of them were rather over-dramatic and caricatured. ‘No wind of blame’ was first published in 1939 but the personalities feel vibrant and modern, and I’m glad to see that these books are regularly re-published as well as being fairly widely available second-hand. 

Recommended if you like this kind of light crime fiction.  

Review copyright 2024 Sue's Book Reviews