The novel is another example of the British tradition of country detective stories, but while Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers almost exclusively described the society of the village aristocracy, in the 40s and 50s the opposite trend became fashionable, and the action moved to " the lower classes." In Blow Off His Head, the aristocracy is just a background that shades the main action, and in this respect the novel is closer in spirit to the books of the then popular author E.K.R. Lorak. By the mid-50s, such a setting was well known to the reader - “The Head” echoed many novels by other detective authors in its motifs and characters.