According to the biography of Georgette Heyer by Jane Aiken Hodge, Heyer was determined to get out of an unfavorable book contract. She was required to turn in a book, so she wrote this one, in an attempt to annoy the publisher by fulfilling the letter but not the spirit of the law. However, she was a terrific writer, and even in this deliberately crude and brutish offering (which is copyrighted 1942 and apparently takes place around that time), it's a great story, with rounded characters, although a few are rather stereotyped. For some reason, it seems that Heyer's contemporary novels always have some mannish women and womanish men in them, in a way that modern readers would probably find offensive. But in "Penhallow", she is trying to be offensive. The first line, "Jimmy the Bastard was cleaning boots..." gives the tip-off. The eponymic anti-hero is the universally loathed head of a household that lives in a constant state of brawling and backstabbing. When his loved ones gather for his birthday and he is murdered, it's a toss-up who did the deed. One of the best things about the book is that Heyer shows how the family falls apart without their hated patriarch. If you pick up this book because you know of Heyer as a witty writer of Regency and other historical romances, think twice. This is a very good book, but has absolutely nothing to do with wit. It is all about anger, not just that of the characters, but of the author.