Skip to main content

The Quiet Gentleman

Originally published in July 2004, on my original 52 Books blog. Edited to remove spoilers.

Author: Georgette Heyer
Year published: 1951
Genre: Romance, historical (Regency period)
Sub-genre(s): Mystery
Where got: Public library

The story:
Soon after Gervase arrives at Stanyon castle to take up his duties as the Earl and landowner, it becomes apparent that someone wants him dead. The most likely suspect is Gervase’s passionate younger brother and heir, Martin, but Gervase is not ready to believe that without further evidence. Complicating the matter for the would-be killer is Drusilla, a practical young lady who is staying with the dowager Countess, and who always seems to be there when Gervase needs protection from the would-be killer. 


Technique, characterisation and plot:

The book is absorbing and funny, not just chuckle-chuckle funny, but laugh-aloud funny.
The romance was subdued - in fact neither hero nor heroine gave any indication of being in love until the last 20 pages or so, and the romantic antics were left to the support cast, whose escapades provided an interesting counterpoint to the phlegmatic relationship between hero and heroine.

The book is well written and the use of language is brilliant. The description of Stanyon castle and all the additions to it over the centuries had me laughing out loud, so wonderfully evocative and sarcastic was it.
The mystery is engaging and the hints very subtle, although an experienced mystery reader will see the villain a mile off (I had the villain and his motive figured out long before anything bad happened.)

Most of the main characters are believable, well-rounded and three-dimensional, with the exception of Drusilla, who comes across as flat. This is unfortunate, since she is the heroine of the book. Gervase is a seemingly calm and submissive dandy, but underneath his placid demeanour there is a will of iron, a quick intelligence and a great sense of humour. His brother, Martin, is equally well written, a young man who has never learned to check his temper or his passions and is quick to anger, but can also be compassionate and caring. His love-interest, Marianne, is a shy, retiring and immature girl who learns a lesson about the dangers of flirting. The least interesting characters are Drusilla, the practical and seemingly unemotional heroine, and Theo, the aloof cousin who is the financial manager of the estate and always seems to be hovering in the background without taking direct part in events.

The love between Drusilla and Gervase is not at all believable - it just appears suddenly near the end, even though Drusilla has supposedly been enamoured of Gervase ever since they first met right at the beginning of the book. It’s almost as if Heyer suddenly realized “hey, I forgot there’s supposed to be a romance between those two” and tacked it on as an afterthought. Other than that, I liked this book very much, so much that I have ordered another of Heyer’s books from an online bookstore, and fully expect it to be just as good, if not better than this one.

Rating:
A charming mystery and romance. 4 stars.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went...
Post a Comment
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...
Post a Comment
Read more