Can we say "obstruction of justice", thought you could. Today this would have got dealt with in a different way (I'd kinda like Randall to meet Peter Grant for a few rounds of debate). Still this is from a different time and a different way of policing.

No-one really misses Dear Old Uncle Gregory when he dies and when it's discovered that it was murder a fractured family find more cracks. The over-confident of his own smarts Randall rubs everyone up the wrong way in order to sit back and watch sparks fly while Inspector Hannasyde tries to discover the truth. The obvious culprit is someone in the family, but who, and why, everyone has a reason but also an alibi.

Then another member dies...

It's an interesting read, a classic period detective story with some horrible people and a hero who could be truly horrible, along with a romance that seemed to come out of no-where. Still the family was well drawn and I found them believable.

ETA: The narration wasn't stand-out for me but it didn't detract for me from the story.

I finished this a week ago so I'm going to have to dredge my memory for things to say about it.

Overall I found it an enjoyable mystery although I guessed some aspects of the solution to the murder. I didn't know that I was right, of course, and the motivations were a bit of a mystery, but it's always fun when you're not completely clueless about a mystery.

I wasn't a fan of the romance in this one because it seemed especially random, but it wasn't a huge part of the story.

That just might be it.

Georgette Heyer: Behold, Here's Poison
(Narrator: Ulli Birvé)

The first Georgette Heyer mysteries I read were her Inspector Hemingway books, which in a way meant I was starting from the wrong end, as Hemingway progressed to the rank of inspector from having been the lead investigator's sergeant in the earlier Superintendent Hannasyde books.  That doesn't impede my enjoyment of Hannasyde's cases in the least, however, now that I'm getting around to these, even though I found the first one (Death in the Stocks) seriously underwhelming.  But Heyer redeems herself in a big way with Behold, Here's Poison: Though a fair share of her mysteries have a sizeable contingent of 1920s-30s stock-in-trade bright young things and generally "nice chaps" (which got on my nerves enough at one point to make me decide I'd had enough of Heyer), when she did set her mind to it, nobody, not even Agatha Christie, did maliciously bickering families like her.  And the family taking center stage here must be one of the meanest she's ever come up with, only (just) surpassed by the Penhallows.  I'm not overwhelmed with the story's romantic dénouement (there always is one in Heyer's books), and while I guessed the mystery's essential "who" and had a basic idea of the "why" at about the 3/4 - 4/5 mark (the actual "why" was a bit of a deus ex machina), by and large this has to count among my favorite Heyer mysteries so far ... though not quite reaching the level of my overall favorite, Envious Casca.

Ulli Birvé isn't and won't ever become my favorite narrator, and she seriously got on my nerves here, too.  Since all of the recent re-recordings of Heyer's mysteries are narrated by her, though, I've decided I won't hold her mannerisms against the author, and I've read enough print versions of Heyer books at this point to have a fairly good idea of what a given character would sound like in my head if I'd read instead of listened to the book in question.

Colin Dexter: The Riddle of the Third Mile
(Narrator: Samuel West)

For Veterans' / Armistice Day I'm claiming the very first book I revisited after the beginning of the 24 Festive Tasks game: Colin Dexter's The Riddle of the Third Mile had long been one of my favorite entries in the Inspector Morse series, but Samuel West's wonderful reading not only confirmed that status but actually moved it up yet another few notches.  (Samuel West is fast becoming one of my favorite audiobook narrators anyway.) The fact that due to the progress of medical research a key element of the mystery would have been much easier to solve these days does not impede my enjoyment in the least ... changing social mores aside, half the Golden Age crime literature, including many of the great classics by Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and even, on occasion, Arthur Conan Doyle would be deprived of substantial riddles if they were set today. -- The book qualifies for this particular "24 Festive Tasks" square, because some of the characters' and their siblings' encounter as British soldiers at the battle of El Alamein (1942) forms the prologue to the book and an important motive for their actions in the world of Oxford academia and Soho strip clubs, some 40 years later.

I'm listening to this for the "Guy Fawkes Night" book task (a book set in the UK).

I had been sort of planning to use this one for the free square, but since OBD called 
"cozy mystery" this morning, and nothing could be cozier than this mystery, I can't resist actually filling a square!

I do prefer Heyer's regency romances to her mysteries. This one was more enjoyable than the other two that I've read, though, and reminded me a lot of an Agatha Christie. It's a solid three stars, with many of the usual cozy tropes.

The characters all initially appear to be the typical poisonous, grasping types that we see in this style of mystery. Ultimately, at least Stella and Randall end up having more there than meets the eye. There was a point in the book where I made the note "wanker" next to some of Randall's dialogue. By the end of the book, he had grown on me considerably.

And, as is often the case, the "victim" in this case ends up to be the worst of the lot.