A New Friend

Tina, who can be depended on not only to find new authors, but to produce the new authors that other books have told be about, recently sent a packet of Josephine Tey novels. Tey writes mysteries, and she’s been billed as “the best mystery writer.” There’s a title I need to explore, I thought when I first read that claim, because I don’t condone “best” being liberally applied to anyone: I’d like to see for myself. I told Tina about my quest to locate Tey stories, and as happens when I ask Tina about books, they appeared shortly after: four Tey stories, enough of a sampling for a few nights’ reading and a conclusion.
Whoever labeled Tey “best” certainly has a point. If you are hunting for mysteries with a lot of flash-bang, a high body count, and buildings regularly set on fire, she’s not your author. If on the other hand, you would like to know about the society where problems take place, and perhaps why the problems occur, and even where we might go from those problems to forestall more of them from happening, then Tey is definitely a read for you.
It’s another world, completely furnished (just as the Jacqueline Winspear Maisie Dobbs novels are; and if you enjoy Maisie, you are likely to be just as entertained by Tey). Not for Tey the “a man walked down the dark alley, pulled out a revolver, and pumped ten rounds in to the person cowering behind trash cans.” Before the body, it’s likely we have a story, set in England. It’s not the England of rich aristocrats or jet set glamour [sic]; it’s the England of the people who go to work, who term themselves “civil servant” rather than Scotland Yard Inspector (your conversationalists are much more likely to talk). It’s the England of people who know where they live: the vagaries of the local river (Bodies dumped above the Rushmere bridge don’t surface for more than thirty years – if ever; bodies dumped below the bridge may surface in a day.) There are home crafted fishing lures, topographical maps of the land, and someone standing on the outer edges of the Scottish Islands can look across the crashing waves toward America.
Inspector Grant, that human and humane Scotland Yard civil servant shares quite a few qualities with Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey (Where my Whimsy leads me). He’s thoughtful, unorthodox, intelligent, and humane. He deduces and (like Maisie) he faces his own demons. These are not confined to England; the personality quirks and lack are also the ones that tear apart the United States in the 21st Century.
Miss Pym, another Tey character has been surprised by her own literary success, and at the importuning of her school years’ friend, is guest speaker at a girls’ college: we learn about the fields of study, we follow the collegiates’ worries and The Nut Tart’s escapades; by the end of the story we understand completely why Miss Pym makes the decisions she does, and why the murderer will never be punished. We know why Innes’ face looks the type to support nations. We feel for her.
Tey was worth four books of reading, and she’s worth quite a few more. Humor, irony, insight, character development. Reasoning. Good stories bring us not only plot, but people and national character. Thank you, Josephine Tey. Thank you, Tina.