An Expert in Murder (Josephine Tey)

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The two strike up an unlikely friendship and promise to meet up at the theatre over the coming week. By the time she had drained three cups of bland coffee, the train appeared to be ready for its journey. Every time she journeyed south, she felt torn between the celebrity that awaited her in London and the ties which kept her in Inverness–and knew she was not truly comfortable with either. DI Penrose, a death-haunted bachelor who asks penetrating questions in a gentle voice, feels like a relative of Adam Dalgliesh; like James, Upson likes to provide an elegant inventory of the architectural and interior design features of the story's locations. Its ‘To Love and Be Wise’ not sure how good or not it is, I will give it a whirl and let you all know.

I enjoyed the one Tey I’ve read hugely, so maybe I shouldn’t bypass these as I have been guilty of doing. The first murder occurs shortly after the train arrives, and odd but obvious clues lead to a connection with the play and with the author herself.An Expert in Murder’ by Nicola Upson has been one such book on my TBR pile (which you can see here) for quite some time. The dining car was almost full when they arrived, but a waiter showed them to the last vacant table. Surprise had given way to a paralysing horror and she had no more control over her limbs than the doll which fell to the floor and lay staring upwards, an indifferent witness to her final moments. Had she been superstitious, Josephine Tey might have realised the odds were against her when she found that her train, the early-morning express from the Highlands, was running an hour and a half late. Some aspects of the book are very sad and poignant, but I think they would have been even stronger in a wholly fictional construction, rather than in this half-fiction/half-fact way of taking a person's life and some known events, then adding imaginary melodrama, characters, actions and feelings.

The ornate station clock declared that it was a quarter past eight when the train finally left the mouth of the station and moved slowly out into the countryside. I shouldn’t be talking to you like this when we’ve only just met and you want to read your paper, but I must thank you now I’ve got the chance.There was a decent mystery there, and engaging characters, and a believable setting in a London theatre.

Now, however, it seems that Tey could become the victim of her own success, as her reputation--and even her life--is put at risk. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. I’m not used to first class,’ she admitted, picking up a silver butter knife to admire the railway crest on the handle. The novel's backdrop is the hit of the 1934 West End season: Tey's Richard of Bordeaux, a success so considerable that groups of supporters attended multiple performances and - one of many striking period details - souvenir dolls of the characters were marketed.

It was hardly the sort of thing that Josephine would ever wear herself, and it made her own plain velvet seem bland in comparison, but she admired its delicate beauty nonetheless. She paused, absent-mindedly curling a lock of brown hair round her finger as she looked out of the window. A remainder mark on the bottom edge of the text, o/w text and boards are clean and unmarked, tight and square. I don’t know anyone else who could spend a day with all that enthusiasm and still look sane at the end of it.