“It’s so awful, Roger! I c-can’t bear to think of Charlie doing such a thing. I—I just can’t realise it. It—it seems impossible!”

Linckes patted her shoulder uncomfortably.

“And—and somehow I can’t feel angry with him. He was always such a dear!”

“I know. He was just one of those people who couldn’t run straight. ’Twasn’t altogether his fault. And one must admire his courage.”

Tony was silent for a moment, still mopping her eyes.

A pair of soft arms stole round his neck.

“No; and I can’t help admiring you!” whispered Tony.

THE END

READING “LINCKES’ GREAT CASE”

It’s not that it’s boring, exactly. It’s… fine. But as a devotee of Heyer’s crime fiction, especially her Inspector Hannasyde novels, it is somewhat disappointing to read this rather pedestrian tale of stolen documents and the pursuit of the very obvious thief that takes so, so, way too long to unfold.

When it comes to Georgette Heyer, no matter what the genre, we expect more than “fine.”

Of course, everyone has to start somewhere, even authors who saw such overnight success as Heyer, and because her first novel was such a tour de force, and is still in print nigh on a century later, it is easy to forget that she was so very young when she wrote it, and that even when this later story was published, in March of 1923, she was not yet even twenty-one years of age.

The theory propounded in the introduction to this piece, that perhaps George Heyer had a significant hand in this somewhat plodding outing, is certainly one explanation for its somewhat lacklustre nature (with apologies to George Heyer, who was an author and poet and general polymath, and whom Georgette adored), but I would offer up an alternate theory: it’s all the younger Heyer’s own work, but is just not very good, because not all early work is. And perhaps it is very different to her “style” simply because she had not yet figured out what that was.

Take, for example, her historical fiction novel The Great Roxhythe, published in 1922, and her 1923 contemporary novel Instead of the Thorn, both wildly different – and, it must be said, less successful – than The Black Moth. That The Transformation of Philip Jettan, now known, in slightly modified form, as Powder and Patch, was also published in 1923 showcases Heyer’s range of experimentation during this period of her writing career, and Linckes’ Great Case could very simply be yet another one of her attempts to find her voice, and her passion, and extend herself beyond the Georgian romps that evidently came so naturally to her.

Certainly, the developing romance of Linckes and Tony, the privileged daughter of a government minister, is pure Georgette, although it is interesting that their class difference does not seem to make much of a difference here – it might be a subtle distinction, but the sprightly Autonia (erk, what a name!) appears to be a scion of the County set while Linckes is, though well-spoken, clearly a working man hailing from the stolid middle class—even if their fathers did go to school together. Although, honestly, quite what Tony finds to so admire about Linckes is perhaps a bigger mystery than who stole those dratted documents could ever be.