sawyl | The Man in the Queue (Reply)

No thoughts on CM today, but instead a few thoughts on a whirlwind re-read of The Man in the Queue, Josephine Tey's first novel and a bit of a classic of Golden Age detective fiction.

A man is stabbed to death whilst waiting in a queue for theatre tickets. The murder is only discovered when the corpse reaches the pit door and the press of the crowd, which had been keeping the body upright, slackens. Called in to investigate, Inspector Alan Grant quickly forms two theories: firstly that the victim, whose clothing had been shorn of identifying marks and whose pocket contained a service revolver, may have intended to kill himself; and secondly, that the murderer was a left-handed man — probably a foreigner given the Englishman's natural aversion to the stiletto — with a cut on his thumb caused by the handle of the dagger.

The initial sections of the book, mainly set in London although Grant does take a day trip to Nottingham, follow the inspector and his underlings as they try to put a name of the victim and try to chase down a potential suspect, whom Grant rather uncomfortably insists on dubbing the Dago. When his quarry is finally flushed out Grant sets off Buchanesque pursuit, heading for the Highlands in search of his man but, when the chase is done and both men are back in London, the rest of the book falls completely flat. A handful of dubious red herrings appear and are rather summarily dismissed before the whole mystery is explained away via an unconvincing confession and a ludicrous coincidence.

Despite being beset by problems towards the end, the beginning and middle of the book are rather good. Grant is an engaging protagonist, as is his adversary, while the scenery and background details are suitably engaging. But what struck me, reading the book for the first time since I read Jo Walton's Small Change series of novels, was how much they owe to Tey — something Walton has discussed before — and how much nastier Walton's Penn-Barkis is than Tey's avuncular Superintendent Barker.