Georgette Heyer was a midcentury novelist, English by birth, fiercely private by nature. She married, moved abroad with her husband to exotic locales like Tanganyika and Macedonia, and seems to have never spent long without moving her pen over paper. Her works of fiction are now gaining in popularity, word spreading over the internet about this little-known gem. Her fans speak of her with the same hushed wonder the public must have expressed when Van Gogh's paintings were first recognised, or Emily Dickinson's poems were first gaining proper homage.

Ms. Heyer wrote many romance novels, but she also wrote detective fiction - two books a year, one of each sort, beginning in 1932. As one who never read, or even wished to read, romantic fiction personally (does Wuthering Heights count?) perhaps I'm the wrong one to judge Ms. Heyer's novel Friday's Child. Then again, since I have no bias toward the author or the genre perhaps I can look at it quite objectively. And, as objectively as I can possibly view the work, I regret to say I found little to like in it.

I wanted to; honestly, I wanted to. As I read, I kept thinking, maybe in the next page, the next chapter, the next event in this book, something will happen that will make it all click. Unfortunately - for me, at least - that moment was elusive. Friday's Child concerns a teenage bride who can't stop getting into trouble. She was not raised for high society, and has no idea how to properly behave in it. Of course there are many rules within said society, mostly unspoken.

The improbably named Hero Wantage, our heroine and the title character, has zero instinct for that privileged world. Nor is her new husband, Lord Sherington, inclined to take the time to teach her. You see, he married Hero on a childish whim. When the object of his desire, a beauty nicknamed 'The Incomparable', turned his marriage proposal down flat, the peevish bachelor vowed to marry the next woman he saw. In a classic 'meet cute' that turns out to be Hero Wantage. Cherubic Hero is crying into her sleeves; her mean stepmother is about to send her to Bath, of all places, to be a governess. It's that, or marry an older gentleman she's none too fond of. "Sherry", however, as everyone seems to call Lord Sherington, is different - she's had a crush on him all her life. Sherry takes the time to ask her what the sniveling is about (one can almost hear Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins in his early lines of dialogue), realises he could do worse to keep his vow to himself, and proposes to the young maiden. She is thrilled to accept, and the journey begins.