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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
If this is a classic, give me the moderns., Nov 13 2000
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.
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