Josephine Tey: The Singing Sands (1952)

Edition: Pan, 1959
Review number: 1031

In this Alan Grant detective story, the last to be published in Tey's lifetime, the Inspector is forced to take a reluctant holiday for health reasons. He goes to stay with his cousin and her family, aiming to spend a relaxing time trout fishing in Scotland. However, he discovers a body on the Scottish sleeper train, and though it appears that Charles Martin died an accidental death while drunk, there is something which intrigues him - odd things like a French citizen doodling a poem in English on the margin of his newspaper.

The Singing Sands - a line from this poem - is not the most striking nor the most ingenious of Tey's novels, but remains an interesting detective novel by any standard.

Josephine Tey: To Love and Be Wise (1950)

Edition: Pan, 1959 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1019

I would defy anyone to work out the solution to the mystery in this novel, unless they have this particular Pan edition - it has an extremely poorly thought out cover picture which gives the whole thing away. (Therefore, no cover picture.)

American photographer Leslie Searle turns up at a London literary party, seeking out popular broadcaster Walter Whitmore, with whom he claims mutual acquaintances. Staying with him in the country, Searle makes quite an impression on the local community, especially on Whitmore's fiancée. Despite the jealousy this causes, the two men decide to collaborate on a book about the local river, travelling from its source to the sea by canoe. When Searle disappears, he is thought to have drowned in the river, his body lost; it looks like murder with no shortage of suspects, even if Whitmore is the main contender.

Tey's detective, Alan Grant, is shared between five of her eight crime novels, and is a neglected great of the genre. In this novel, his usual character seems to have been overcome with something of Campion, though this is partly because the setting is very reminiscent of Allingham - an artists' retreat in Suffolk (Orfordshire, as it is called here).

Josephine Tey: The Daughter of Time (1951)

Edition: Penguin, 1954
Review number: 675

The idea for the setting of this famous detective novel was perhaps stimulated by a desire to imitate Mycroft Holmes rather than his better known brother. Tey was not by any means the first writer of a novel where the crime scene is never seen by the sleuth, who has to rely on reports rather than statements or forensic evidence. There is a minor series of stories by Baroness Orczy, for example; but it is Tey's novel which defines the subgenre. The Daughter of Time has been extensively admired and occasionally imitated, most notably by Colin Dexter.

Tey's sleuth Alan Grant is stuck in hospital; looking a pictures of faces to while away the time - he is interested in the reflection of the personality in the face - he becomes fascinated by Richard III, as shown in his best known portrait. Not seeing the monster who murdered his nephews in the picture, he begins to investigate, with the help of various friends who provide books, or spend time in the British Library.

The Daughter of Time is by no means the first vindication of Richard III - there is a fair amount of evidence suggesting Henry VII as the instigator of the deaths of the princes in the Tower of London - but it is certainly the best known. While never pretending to be an academic history, it does contain a lot of information, which is presented in a remarkably entertaining if somewhat one-sided manner.

The title is ironic, for the daughter of time is truth (the quotation is from Aulus Gallius, though he attributes it to someone else, saying he can't remember who), and time has tended to blacken Richard's reputation rather than reveal what many believe to be the truth. Perhaps if Shakespeare's play had never been written, it would have proved easier for campaigners to re-establish his reputation.

Josephine Tey: A Shilling for Candles (1953)

Edition: Pan, 1959
Review number: 495

One of the most conventional of all the crime novels written by Josephine Tey, A Shilling for Candles is a straightforward mystery. Inspector Grant is investigating the death by drowning of film star Christine Clay, which would seem to be suicide except for signs that she struggled. The case is interesting for the way in which everyone knows who Christine is, but hardly anyone knows anything much about her.

The plot is very well put together (though it requires unnecessary coincidences to widen the field of potential suspects), the characters interesting and their psychology convincing, but the brilliance of most of her other novels is missing.

Josephine Tey: The Man in the Queue (1953)

Edition: Pan, 1973
Review number: 472

This novel introduces detective Alan Grant, who features in several of Tey's crime stories. Like all of her novels, there is something unusual about The Man in the Queue; in this case the setting of the crime. A queue is waiting for tickets to the last performances of the phenomenally successful West End musical Didn't You Know?, but when the box office opens and the tightly packed queue begins to move, one man falls, dead, with a dagger in his back. Stabbed in front of hundreds of witnesses, but in a situation where nobody notices what has happened - and nobody knows the victim - the case is almost like a mirror image of the traditional crime novel. It is quite a challenging mystery, albeit with some features which are difficult to believe (why didn't the man cry out when stabbed?), and it is told in such a way that while we don't have complete information until the very end, we always know as much as Grant does.

Though Tey is best known for Brat Farrar and The Franchise Affair, all her crime novels are well worth reading, and The Man in the Queue is no exception.