Josephine Tey Complete Works

The Complete Works of JOSEPHINE TEY (1896-1952) Contents The Inspector Alan Grant Books The Man in the Queue (1929) A Shilling for Candles (1936) The Franchise Affair (1948) To Love and Be Wise (1950) The Daughter of Time (1951) The Singing Sands (1952) Other Novels Kif (1929) The Expensive Halo (1931) Miss Pym Disposes (1946) Brat Farrar (1949) The Privateer (1952) The Sketches Sketches from ‘The Westminster Gazette’ The Plays Richard of Bordeaux (1932) The Laughing Woman (1934) Queen of Scots (1934) Cornelia (1946) The Little Dry Thorn (1946) Leith Sands and Other Short Plays (1946) Valerius (1948) Dickon (1953) The Pomp of Mr. Pomfret (1954) Patria (1954) The Balwhinnie Bomb (1954) The Pen of My Aunt (1954) The Princess who Liked Cherry Pie (1954) Lady Charing is Cross (1954) Sweet Coz (1954) Reckoning (1954) Barnharrow (1954) The Staff-Room (1954) The Non-Fiction Claverhouse (1937) The Delphi Classics Catalogue © Delphi Classics 2023 Version 1 Browse our Main Series Browse our Ancient Classics Browse our Poets Browse our Art eBooks Browse our Classical Music series The Complete Works of JOSEPHINE TEY By Delphi Classics, 2023 COPYRIGHT Complete Works of Josephine Tey First published in the United Kingdom in 2023 by Delphi Classics. © Delphi Classics, 2023. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published. ISBN: 978 1 80170 086 3 Delphi Classics is an imprint of Delphi Publishing Ltd Hastings, East Sussex United Kingdom Contact: [email protected] www.delphiclassics.com From classic detective masterpieces to edge-of-your-seat mysteries, explore our range of exciting Thrillers… The Inspector Alan Grant Books Inverness, Scottish Highlands — Elizabeth MacKintosh, known by the pseudonym Josephine Tey, was born in Inverness in 1896. She was the oldest of three daughters of Colin MacKintosh, a fruiterer, and Josephine (née Horne). Tey (middle) with her sisters Jean and Etta, c. 1914 Tey attended Inverness Royal Academy, a grammar school with a history dating back to the thirteenth century. The Man in the Queue (1929) OR, KILLER IN THE CROWD On completing her schooling, Tey taught physical training at various schools in England and Scotland and during her vacations worked at a convalescent home in Inverness as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse. A youthful romance ended tragically with the death of a soldier in the Somme. In 1923, she returned to Inverness permanently to care for her invalid mother, and stayed after her mother’s death that year to keep house for her father. While caring for her parents, she commenced her career as a writer. Her first published work was in The Westminster Gazette in 1925, under the name Gordon Daviot. She continued publishing verse and short stories in several other periodicals. Her first novel, Kif: An Unvarnished History, was well received by the critics and a few months later, her first mystery novel, The Man in the Queue, was published by Benn, Methuen. It appeared in May 1929 under the pseudonym of Gordon Daviot. It was published by Dutton in the USA and was christened as “the Dutton prize mystery novel” for the month — a PR device to attract the attention of potential readers. The ‘queue’ in the book’s title is one for the final performance of a musical comedy in London’s West End. The ‘man’ in question is Bert Sorrell and when he falls out of the queue, it is discovered that he has been stabbed in the back with a stiletto dagger. The case is assigned to Inspector Grant and he follows several leads, but struggles to make progress. Eventually, he traces a suspect to the dead man’s boarding house and tracks his landlady to a remote hideaway on the west coast of Scotland. After tracking down and arresting his man, Grant begins to have doubts. He pursues other leads, but makes no progress. Then an unexpected figure comes forward to tell just what happened to the man in the queue… The publishers devised another idea for publicity, asking critics not to give away the identity of the murderer in their reviews. This, of course, garnered them some extra coverage and it encouraged critics to sing the praises of the novel. One reviewer called it, “an unusually clever concoction,” whilst another suggested that, “The author has shown an uncanny instinct for things criminal in this novel. The book is thick with the murky London atmosphere that the reader of detective fiction will enjoy.” Another critic was a little less fulsome in their praise, simply noting that, “Mr. Daviot has put some sound work into the book”, but perhaps the best review was the one that called it “…by far the best mystery we have read in a long time…Unfortunately we cannot aver that its chief charm is its mystery for the book is so entertainingly written that one forgets to criticise and reads for the mere pleasure of it.” The hero of Tey’s crime-fighting world, Alan Grant has all the intuition and tenacity of a perfectly penned sleuth in the 1920s’ to 1950’s, but with a remarkable difference — he was one of the first fictional detectives to be employed by Scotland Yard. An Englishman by birth, little is known about his family except that his father was Scottish and that his grandfather ‘belonged to the Strathspey’. He is thirty-five years of age in the first novel The Man in the Queue. Grant enjoys his work, even though he calls it ‘a dog’s life’. He has an attribute known as ‘flair’, which affords him a unique insight into the criminal mind. He is a hard-working officer and is possessed of a rare gift of intuition, helping him to work out challenging problems. Also, he has an over-active conscience and he will not let go of a problem until he has solved it. The character proved popular with readers and