Georgette Heyer always claimed to dislike the mystery novels she had churned out on a regular basis prior to World War II. In part, this was thanks to ongoing struggles with that publisher—while also noting that her mystery publishers were doing a better job of promoting her works than her historical publishers were. In part, it may have been the ongoing tendency among literary critics to regard mysteries and other genre fiction as somehow lesser than mainstream literary fiction—a convenient way to place Georgette Heyer, who continued to long for literary acceptance, into that “lesser” category. In part it may also have been that at least some of her mystery novels were collaborated with her husband, who usually supplied murder methods and motives, which partly helps explain why some of these novels turn on obscure points of inheritance law—Rougier was a barrister.
Thus these novels were not entirely “hers.” But for all of her spoken dislike of the genre, Heyer had written one a year for a decade—and even after she stopped writing them, found ways to sneak elements of her mystery novels into her historical works. Even in the subgenre that she was now building, Regency romances, in The Quiet Gentleman.











By now entrenched in the Regency subgenre she had created, for her next novel,
Despite getting a writer’s credit for
Georgette Heyer was not known for paying much attention in her historical fiction to the problems faced by the lower classes, especially in her Regency novels, by now almost entirely focused on comedy. The lower classes, when they appeared at all, showed up as loyal, devoted servants—sometimes too devoted—thieves, or comedy figures. But after three straight Regency novels, in
The second movie based on a Roald Dahl novel to be released in 1996 was Matilda. Like the novel, Matilda tells the story of a precocious young girl who, after severe emotional abuse from her parents and the school principal, develops powers of telekinesis. It’s one of the rare films that focuses on girl power, and it’s a pity that—thanks largely to its source material and some surprisingly uneven directing from veteran Danny DeVito, it doesn’t quite work. At least for adults. Nine year old girls, I suspect, will be grinning.
Jim Henson’s last work was done on 
Distressed at previous movie treatments of his books, Roald Dahl refused to allow anyone to film James and the Giant Peach during his lifetime. After his death, however, his widow agreed to sell the film rights, leading to a 1996 Walt Disney/Tim Burton production.
As I noted during my post on 






















