Tey, Josephine:  The Man in the Queue

This was the first Alan Grant mystery (Elizabeth MacKintosh’s first book, 1929) which she originally published under her other pseudonym, Gordon Daviot.  The first novel under the     Josephine Tey pseudonym was A Shilling for Candles (1936), also an Alan Grant novel.   The other Alan Gran novels were To Love and Be Wise 1950, The Daughter of Time (1951), and The Singing Sands (1952).  Also as Josephine Tey she wrote Miss Pym Disposes (1947), The Franchise Affair (1949), and Brat Farrar (1949).  She died in London on February 13, 1952.  Tey was a master at writing mysteries that contained ingenious puzzles but also equally interesting characters.  She was more like Dorothy Sayers than Agatha Christie in that her books were novels that contained mysteries.  My favorite Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None, also falls into this category.  It is curious that Alan Grant, like Ngaio Marsh’s Roderick Alleyn, did not need his salary as a policeman to earn his living as he had a considerable inheritance that would have sufficed for his needs.  They both seem to be “gentlemen detectives”, but unlike Dorothy Sayer’s Lord Peter they were employed by the police.

This first mystery has an ingenious puzzle involving a death by stabbing that happens in the line of people clamoring to get tickets for the final performance of a famous actress who is leaving to go to America the next day.  The characters are interesting the clues are very well hidden.  Even in this first effort you can see why Tey was considered one of the queens of the Golden Age of detective fiction.

Spencer-Fleming, Julia:  In the Bleak Midwinter (Melinda recommended this) 

I really enjoyed this first book in the series and plan to read the others.  The two main characters, a new female Episcopalian Priest and an agnostic Chief of Police meet over a case of an abandoned baby and find they have a lot in common including both serving in the military under war conditions, the Chief, Russ Van Alstyne, in Viet Nam and the priest, Clare Ferguson, in Desert Storm.  The development of the characters and the progression of their friendship are as important as the mystery plot in this novel.  I will be interested to see how this plays out in the next novels, because Russ is married and Clare is a priest.  I hope the author handles this potential time bomb well.