61. They Found Him Dead by Georgette Heyer

I found this in a Montreal free box (there are more and more popping up these days, which is nice).  I thought that Georgette Heyer only wrote entertaining Regency romance adventures, but it appears she also had a career and name as a mystery writer as well, at least according to the marketing phrase on the back cover of this book:  "By the Queen of Mystery and Suspense" and that she has quite a few other mysteries written.  

I was looking for a readable, English book and this definitely fit the bill. It starts off at a dinner with a confusing number of inter-related characters, so confusing that I had to write them down.  The broad picture is a successful business firm making "nets" with two older partners and their various family members.  The patriarch, Silas Kane, who inherited the business is conservative and cheap.  His business partner wants to take on a risky new venture in Australia which Kane is decidedly against.  That night, in his evening walk, Silas Kane falls off a cliff and dies.  This is seen as a terrible accident and upends the family business, putting his weak-willed nephew Clement at the helm.  Clement is desperate to please his beautiful, comically self-absorbed and expensive wife until he is shot in the back of the head.

The investigation is fun, but more fun is the family, each of them a character.  The most sensible ones are young, sporty Jim Kane who though competent, wasn't ready to have the business thrust upon him and his fiancee, his great-aunt's secretary.  We get lots of very funny dialogue as the self-absorbed compete with the acerbic.  The mystery was marred somewhat by a couple of the characters being really obtuse and it being so obvious that Heyer had to deliberately hide it from the reader.  Still a very enjoyable read and good to know that she also has a competent line in contemporary mysteries!