- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd (December 1953)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 043216510X
- ISBN-13: 978-0432165102
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
" Inspector Alan Grant... painstakingly, fascinatingly identifies the body, then chases suspects up to the Highlands of Scotland and all around the town." - "Daily Express"
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Book Description
The first of Tey's Inspector Grant mysteries concerns the murder of a man, standing in a ticket queue for a London musical comedy. With his customary tenacity, Grant pursues his suspects through the length of Britain and the labyrinth of the city.
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First Sentence
IT WAS BETWEEN seven and eight o'clock on a March evening, and all over London the bars were being drawn back from pit and gallery doors. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
IT WAS BETWEEN seven and eight o'clock on a March evening, and all over London the bars were being drawn back from pit and gallery doors. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
If this is a classic, give me the moderns.,
This review is from: Man in the Queue (Paperback)
Robert Barnard, in his intro to the Scribner's edition, writes that Tey shares some of what he feebly calls the "less attractive attitudes" of her Golden Age contemporaries, among which he includes anti-Semitism and contempt for the working class. He neglected to mention xenophobia, so Tey on page 75 writes of "the foreigner's ratlike preference for the sewers to the open". Clearly Tey was a nasty piece of work, which the reader could possibly overlook had the book overwhelming redeeming features (it doesn't). There is one peculiarity, which is the sporadic presence of a first-person narrator. This "I" appears only three times in the book, very briefly, and the reader is given no indication as to who this person is, nor their relationship to the detective, Grant. Anyway, the latter is given almost superhuman "intuitive" powers by Tey, which fail, however, to lead him to the murderer. Not surprising, since the perpetrator emerges to confess out of nowhere, making a mockery of the investigations Grant has been undertaking thus far. The motivation is suspect too, as there are any number alternatives to murder open to the killer. The structure of a piece of jewelery is significant (with hindsight). Unfortunately, Tey blunders because no item of this kind is created in the way which would satisfy this element of her plot. The book has been described as undated, but the relationship between the police and criminals as presented is preposterous for any age, including 1929. Police, according to Tey, prefer to be injured in the line of duty rather than arrest someone who submits without a fight: "It is an unlovely job to arrest a craven. A police officer would much sooner be hacked on the shins than clasped about the knees". Earlier in the book, a vicious American criminal is requsted - there's no other word for it - to give Grant some help identifying someone. He calls Grant when he remembers the person: "I say, Inspector, this is Miller speaking...[he gives the info]... Don't mention it. I'm pleased to be able to help". Yes, a most authentic picture, what? The only thing which elevates this book above the utterly worthless is Tey's descriptive powers, which are good, and which justify the two stars I give it. On the basis of this book Tey had no business writing mysteries at all, and maybe should have become what Anthony Boucher used to call a "straight" novelist. Dashiell Hammett's THE MALTESE FALCON was published in the same year as this, and provides a contrast in vigor and authenticity which consigns Tey's relic to the dustbin of crime fiction.
3.0 out of 5 stars
An All-Too Human Detective,
By A Customer
This review is from: Man in the Queue (Paperback)
Josephine Tey is often touted as a Thinking Man's Mystery Writer, a more literary version of such contemporaries as Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh. This is the first of her books that I've read, and she was indeed a splendid writer. But the mark of any good mystery author (as far as I'm concerned) is the ability to dazzle the audience with the denouement, usually at the hands of the brilliant amateur or professional sleuth who's trying to solve the case. Tey's Detective Grant seems remarkably able at the start of the book to pull together loose strands of information and reach those impressive conclusions that readers expect from fictional detectives. But the actual solution of the whodunit is literally handed to him (by a minor character who simply confesses out of the blue) and is due neither to his brains nor his instincts. It comes, in fact, at a time in the story when Grant is absolutely stuck and has no idea what to do next. By this time he's made as many mistakes and ignored as many important clues as he's followed. Perhaps this was Tey's way of showing us the fallibility and humaness of the police, but is that what we want in our fictional sleuths? Give me someone omniscient like Poirot or Peter Wimsey any day.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Dated but a good read still,
By Carol Peterson Hennekens (Colorado Springs, CO United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Man in the Queue (Audio Cassette)
Reading this book in context is the key. It's a first book and it was written in 1929 (before the crash). Yes, the language is of a different place and time. Some of it is awkward for a modern ear (the "foreigner" phrase in particular). Still, I enjoy being transported to a different world once in awhile and reading writing from that time is different than when a modern writer writes of history.The plotting on this is pretty simple - finite number of suspects and such. The ending came a little bit too much from left field for my taste. Bottom line - an adequate first effort. Don't judge Tey on the basis of this book -- later books are much better.
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