The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer - 5 stars

[Theresa]

Hugo, the eponymous Unknown Ajax, has now become one of my favorite Heyer heros! I don't remember reading this Heyer before even though I could swear I had read all of Heyer in my teens and twenties. Although in truth the final extended dramatic scene seemed faintly familiar, but that may be the result of a similarity to a scene in The Talisman Ring. Whatever, this is an enormously entertaining Regency historical novel, and one I will revisit!

Romance is pushed into a distant secondary position here. What is the center of the drama is the Darracott family itself into which a previously unknown heir is being thrust as a result of the death in a sailing accident of the patriarch's eldest son and grandson. Seems that Lord Derracott's disinherited second son, who had married 'a weaver's brat', had a son who was now the heir, despite Lord Derracott's efforts to keep him out of the line of succession. The law is the law and whether he likes it or not, Lord Derracott has to acknowledge the weaver's brat, as his heir. He's ordered him to present himself forthwith at Darracott Place where the entire family has been summoned to inspect the new heir and assist in shaping him into a true Darracott and member of the nobility.

All of this is of course quite amusing considering that Lord Darracott rules with an arbitrary, curmudgeonly, iron fist, with decided preferences among his children and grandchildren, and a tight hold on the purse strings. The financial security of the family seems to be questionable, with Darracott Place reflecting poor management and a mansion fallen into grave disrepair. And into this seething caldron of discontent arrives Major Hugo Darracott, heir apparent, a veritable giant with curly blond hair and guileless blue eyes, and he is instantly misjudged as being a bumbling oaf, dumb as an ox. Well, the ladies of the house don't believe that but all the men completely underestimate him. Of course, Hugo, who has an execrable sense of humor and is a master of dissembling, plays up this misjudgment for his own purposes. It leads to a number of Heyer's funniest wittiest scenes and exchanges of dialogue to be found in her work, including many laugh out loud moments, while the story takes us through a thin smuggling subplot that serves as the deus ex machina for ultimately pulling this family together and cementing Hugo's position as heir and future able and benevolent Lord Darracott.

One rather odd result of reading this: I now want to read Shakespeare's Troilus & Cressida because Heyer has members of the family frequently quoting from it the descriptions and actions of Ajax, whom Shakespeare acknowledges as a great hero but also as an oversized dumb oaf, which of course is not quite Homer's image of Ajax. Or Heyer's.