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JOSEPHINE TEY

Elizabeth MacKintosh used two pen names during her writing career: Josephine Tey, who was also her Suffolk great-great-grandmother, and Gordon Daviot. She was born in 1897 in Inverness, Scotland, where she attended the Royal Aacdemy. Miss MacKintosh later trained for three years at the Anstey Physical Training College in Birmingham, then began her teaching career as a physical training instructor. She gave up teaching to keep house for her father, who lived near Loch Ness, and pursued her writing. Her first book was The Man in the Queue (1929), published under the Gordon Daviot pseudonym, and it introduced the character of Inspector Grant, familiar now from the Tey novels. The author wrote chiefly under the signature of Gordon Daviot from 1929 to 1946, during which time her works included the play Richard of Bordeaux (1933), which ran for a year with John Gielgud in the lead part. The first of the Josephine Tey mysteries, A Shilling for Candles , was published in 1936 and was eventually followed by Miss Pym Disposes in 1947. Also included among the "Tey" mysteries are The Franchise Affair (1949), Brat Farrar (1949), To Love and Be Wise (1950), The Daughter of Time (1951), and The Singing Sands (1952), all of which are available from Collier Books. Elizabeth MacKintosh died in London on February 13, 1952.

From: The Man in the Queue, Collier Books, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York (1988)

Books by Josephine Tey:

Brat Farrar

(1949)

It was an impossible deception. Even though Brat Farrar had been carefully coached on every detail of Patrick Ashby's early life, even though Brat looked like Patrick and acted like him, someday he would be found out. Especially since the young man whose inheritance he was stealing knew Brat was an imposter. Why, then, didn't he expose Brat? Or had he other plans for Brat's downfall? And then, on a dark night, the pretender and his mortal enemy faced each other in a final, terrible, climactic moment!

The Daughter of Time (1951)

The Franchise Affair

(1949)

Could The Franchise really be the scene of a brutal beating? The prison of a kidnapped child? Rendevous for a clandestine affair?

Robert Blair, of Blair, Hayward & Bennet, had an orderly life and an orderly law practice, - until he answered his phone one slightly dull afternoon.

Marion Sharpe, the beautiful mistress of The Franchise, had been accused of a hideous crime, and asked Blair's protection.

Was she as innocent as she protested, or a vicious criminal?

To Love and Be Wise

(1950)

Literary sherry parties were not Grant's cup of tea. But when Scotland Yard's Detective-Sergeant arrived to pick up Marta Hallard for dinner, he was struck by the handsome young American photographer, Leslie Searle. Authoress Lavinia Fitch was sure her guest "must have been something very wicked in ancient Greece," and the art colony at Salcott St. Mary would have agreed. Yet Grant heard nothing more of Searle until the news of his disappearance. Had Searle drowned by accident, or could he have been murdered by one of his young women admirers? Was it a possible case of suicide, or had he simply vanished for reasons of his own?

The Man in the Queue

(1929)

A long line had formed for the standing-room-only section of the Woffington Theatre. Didn't You Know?, London's favorite musical comedy for the past two years, was finishing its run at the end of the week. Suddenly, the line began to move, forming a wedge before the open doors as hopeful theartegoers nudged their way forward. But one man, his head sunk down upon his chest, slowly sank to his knees and then , still more slowly, keeled over on his face. Thinking he had fainted, a spectator moved to help, but recoiled in horror from what lay before him: the man in the queue had a small silver dagger neatly plunged into his back. So begins Inspector Alan Grant's first spectacular case, and it's up to the dapper detective to discover how murder was committed among so many witnesses, none of whome saw a thing.

Miss Pym Disposes

(1946)

Even Miss Pym agreed that it was a hateful time at school, with ordinarily pretty girls poring red-eyed over heavy tomes, rising at 5:00 A.M. ... but murder?

Miss Pym is a warm-hearted, blithe little lady who reads 37 books on psychology, disagrees with them all, and writes pages and pages of rebuttal. To her amazement, she becomes a "best-seller".

When she goes to Leys College as a guest lecturer, one student has a particular and fatal "accident." Miss Pym suspects foul play, puts her interesting psychological theories into practice, and turns up some surprising conclusions ...

A Shilling for Candles

(1936)

On a clear, sunny morning on the English seacoast, a bit of bright cloth and some gulls announced the location of a ghastly deed.

A woman's body lay limp on the beach. And while the waves lapped gently at her scarlet-tipped toes, twisted in her hair was an article which screamed murder.

For Inspector Alan Grant the case would become a nightmare of too many clues and too many motives. For the woman was a famous screen actress, Christine Clay. And the world was full of people who wanted her dead.

The Singing Sands

(1952)

What did it mean, this strange verse ... Where are the talking beasts, the singing sands? What mad Paradise was this?

Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard was on sick leave, but he was so fascinated by the poem and the reckless-looking young man who had scribbled it - a youth he'd found, by accident, quite dead in a train bound for the Scottish Highlands - that he couldn't relax or enjoy the heather until - he had discovered all the sinister details in one of the cleverest murders in criminal history.

 

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