The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey ***
07 December 2024 – 20 January 2025
When I travelled to India at the end of the year, I was exhausted and sought all the possible comforts available to me. Josephine Tey has been my favourite to read this year and her wit and elegance in The Daughter of Time and The Franchise Affair have given me many moments of delight. The Man in the Queue is the First Inspector Grant novel although I am not sure if The Franchise Affair should be considered one, given he appears so little.
The Man in the Queue has a premise that is so wonderful and so theatrical (literally), it feels like one of those incredible Hitchcock stories. Tey’s description of the theatre queue the last night of a show with a famous star before she tours America is faultless. I also very much enjoyed the saunter to the remote parts of Scotland, where Tey was from but I guess some of the charm of the other two novels was lacking. It was definitely patchier (especially towards the middle), but with glimpses of the greatness, invention and confidence that was to come.
