No Wind of Blame [Hardcover]

Georgette Heyer (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Bantam Books (1971)
• ASIN: B0014C27QS
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Author of over fifty books, Georgette Heyer is the best-known and best-loved of all historical novelists, making the Regency period her own. Her first novel, "The Black Moth," published in 1921, was written at the age of fifteen to amuse her convalescent brother; her last was My Lord John. Although most famous for her historical novels, she also wrote eleven detective stories. Georgette Heyer died in 1974 at the age of seventy-one.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Light-hearted romance with a bit of mystery, December 12, 2000

By 

A. Woodley "Patroness, Janeites, the Austen list" (New Zealand) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: No Wind of Blame (Hardcover)

This is one of Heyer's most complicated murder mysteries. It is absolutely stuffed full of red-herrings.

As usual Heyer takes us to a classic English village, sometime in the 1930's, and into the home of Ermintrude, her daughter Vicki, Ermintrude's second husband Wally Carter and Wally's young relative - Miss Cliffe. Add to that mysterious Russian Princes, strange goings on in various shrubberies and unexpected shooting and you do have a very nice base for a mystery in the usual ironic Heyer-style.

In classic Heyer way she also mixes in a little romance, but in very un-Heyer-like move she does a switch in the romance which never ceases to annoy me each time I read it. In the beginning we are made to think that Mary Cliffe is the lead heroine and Vicki, daughter of the singularly eccentric Ermintrude, as the flaky it-girl. Somewhere in mid-book things suddenly do a volte-face and we are expected to accept Vicki as the heroine....anyway...

I don't know that this is one of Heyer's best mysteries, I rather like Behold Here's Poison - best - but it does deliver in wit and substance. It also offers a very satisfying mystery to try to work out.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A period piece mystery that deserves a second look., August 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: No Wind of Blame (Hardcover)

Georgette Heyer was considered an excellent mystery writer when she began writing her stories in the 1930's. No wind of blame was written in 1939 and tells a neat story of murder and social manners of the time. There is an inspector and his superintendent, many clues spread throughout the story and a little love story all rolled into one. A great read if you enjoy English village mysteryies.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Audio Book Review-- A Spanking Good Mystery, September 19, 2005

By 

Sires "I enjoy mysteries, historical and proc... (Chesapeake, OH, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: No Wind of Blame (Audio Cassette)

Michael Barnes does a stellar job of reading this book on the Chivers audiocassettes. His voices are perfect and very period (1930's England). And I actually caught things that I had not remembered from my first reading of this book a decade or so again.

If Heyer does anything well she has an ear for slang. I laughed out loud when Wally Carter (who had just confessed to some very bad behavior) was complaining about the fact that his neice and step daughter had found out about the behavior by reading a letter addressed to him. "It's not," he said sternly, "the clean potato." Never heard that saying before.

Then there is the Prince, not to be mistaken for Prince the dog, and the histrionic former actress turned lady of the manor, Ermintrude.

I agree that Heyer seems to have changed sympathies in main stream, but how could one not rather spend time with the imaginative Vickie than Mary who does have Solid Worth but is not nearly as much fun.