of his books, rests on the provisions of the law. Like Crispin’s, the writing is lively, the dialogue convincing, the characters interesting and the plot involving. The book opens with a loud complaint by the judge that, because of the economies of war, his appearance is not being celebrated as it should be with a flourish of trumpets. The man, the time and the place are immediately set in an opening paragraph which is as arresting as if the trumpets had indeed sounded.
Josephine Tey, the pseudonym of the Scottish writer Elizabeth Mackintosh (1896–1952), was better known in her lifetime for her play
Richard of Bordeaux
than she was for her detective fiction. Her detective is Inspector Alan Grant, who is very much in the gentlemanly mould, notable for his intuition, intelligence and Scottish tenacity. He first appeared in
The Man in the Queue
(1929) and was still on the job when, in 1952, Tey published her eighth and last crime novel,
The
Singing Sands
. But with the two novels which many readers regard as among her best,
Brat Farrar
(1949) and
The Franchise Affair
(1948), she moved further from the conventional plot of the detective story and with such success that she might not now be regarded as a detective novelist had she not created Inspector Grant. Novelists who prefer not to be so designated should beware of introducing a serial detective.
Brat Farrar
is a mystery of identity set on the estate and the riding stables of Latchetts on the south coast. If Patrick Ashby, heir to the property, has really committed suicide, who is the mysterious young man calling himself
Brat Farrar
who returns to claim the family inheritance, who not only looks like Patrick but is familiar with details of the family history? We, the readers, know that he is an impostor, although we quickly come to sympathise with him. This, then, is a mystery of identification, common in English fiction, and the fact that Brat Farrar is also a murder mystery only becomes apparent late in the novel. In what is probably Tey’s best-known book,
The Franchise Affair
, two eccentric newcomers to the village, an elderly widow and her spinster daughter, are accused by a young woman of imprisoning her in their isolated house, The Franchise, and makingher work as their slave, a plot based on the real-life Elizabeth Canning case of 1753–54. The story conforms more closely to the conventional mystery, although there is no murder. A local solicitor, who is consulted by the women, is convinced of their innocence and sets out to prove it. The mystery is, of course, centred on the girl. If her story is false from start to finish, how did she obtain the facts which enabled her to lie so convincingly? An uncomplicated structure and the first-person narrative—the tale is told by the solicitor—engage the reader both with the characters, who are exceptionally well drawn, and with the social and class prejudices of the smalltown community—prejudices which the author to some extent undoubtedly shared.
Josephine Tey not only has retained her hold on readers of detective fiction, but is now being resurrected in the novels of Nicola Upson, who sets her mysteries in the years between the wars and peoples them with real-life characters of the time, Josephine Tey being her serial protagonist. Famous detectives have from time to time been resurrected on film or in print—Jill Paton Walsh is continuing the Wimsey saga—but Nicola Upson is the first writer to choose a previous real-life crime novelist as an ongoing character.
The great majority of detectives in the Golden Age were men—and, indeed, if they were professional police officers, had to be male, since women at that time had a very limited role in policing. In general women characters who dabbled in detection were either sidekicks or cheerful crusaders-in-arms to the dominant male hero, serving as either a Watson or a love interest, or both. One obvious exception is Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, who is not
Josephine Tey, the pseudonym of the Scottish writer Elizabeth Mackintosh (1896–1952), was better known in her lifetime for her play
Richard of Bordeaux
than she was for her detective fiction. Her detective is Inspector Alan Grant, who is very much in the gentlemanly mould, notable for his intuition, intelligence and Scottish tenacity. He first appeared in
The Man in the Queue
(1929) and was still on the job when, in 1952, Tey published her eighth and last crime novel,
The
Singing Sands
. But with the two novels which many readers regard as among her best,
Brat Farrar
(1949) and
The Franchise Affair
(1948), she moved further from the conventional plot of the detective story and with such success that she might not now be regarded as a detective novelist had she not created Inspector Grant. Novelists who prefer not to be so designated should beware of introducing a serial detective.
Brat Farrar
is a mystery of identity set on the estate and the riding stables of Latchetts on the south coast. If Patrick Ashby, heir to the property, has really committed suicide, who is the mysterious young man calling himself
Brat Farrar
who returns to claim the family inheritance, who not only looks like Patrick but is familiar with details of the family history? We, the readers, know that he is an impostor, although we quickly come to sympathise with him. This, then, is a mystery of identification, common in English fiction, and the fact that Brat Farrar is also a murder mystery only becomes apparent late in the novel. In what is probably Tey’s best-known book,
The Franchise Affair
, two eccentric newcomers to the village, an elderly widow and her spinster daughter, are accused by a young woman of imprisoning her in their isolated house, The Franchise, and makingher work as their slave, a plot based on the real-life Elizabeth Canning case of 1753–54. The story conforms more closely to the conventional mystery, although there is no murder. A local solicitor, who is consulted by the women, is convinced of their innocence and sets out to prove it. The mystery is, of course, centred on the girl. If her story is false from start to finish, how did she obtain the facts which enabled her to lie so convincingly? An uncomplicated structure and the first-person narrative—the tale is told by the solicitor—engage the reader both with the characters, who are exceptionally well drawn, and with the social and class prejudices of the smalltown community—prejudices which the author to some extent undoubtedly shared.
Josephine Tey not only has retained her hold on readers of detective fiction, but is now being resurrected in the novels of Nicola Upson, who sets her mysteries in the years between the wars and peoples them with real-life characters of the time, Josephine Tey being her serial protagonist. Famous detectives have from time to time been resurrected on film or in print—Jill Paton Walsh is continuing the Wimsey saga—but Nicola Upson is the first writer to choose a previous real-life crime novelist as an ongoing character.
The great majority of detectives in the Golden Age were men—and, indeed, if they were professional police officers, had to be male, since women at that time had a very limited role in policing. In general women characters who dabbled in detection were either sidekicks or cheerful crusaders-in-arms to the dominant male hero, serving as either a Watson or a love interest, or both. One obvious exception is Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, who is not
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