A Shilling for Candles

The second book by Josephine Tey in the Inspector Alan Grant series.

Early one morning a woman's body is found at the bottom of a cliff. Initially it is thought that the death of the woman was due to suicide but when the body is examined a button is found tangled in her hair. Inspector Grant is called to investigate the murderer as well as determine why the crime was committed. The main suspect is a young man who was living in the same house as the victim however a number of other possibilities also keep Inspector Grant occupied as he tries to unravel the mystery.

Like many other Josephine Tey novels part of the plot is linked to the theatrical world. This time the victim is an actress. Inspector Grant investigates all the possibilities methodically and is assisted, and at times possibly hindered, by Erica, the daughter of a local policemen. The author is interested in people and spends time making her main characters human, including showing weaknesses. Grant makes mistakes from time to time and worries about having made them, however one of his strengths is his ability to examine and observe suspects as complex people in order to eliminate them from the enquiry.

Josephine Tey is considered one of the important authors in what is termed the Golden Age of British crime fiction along with Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L Sayers and Margery Allingham.

The Man in the Queue

This book, Josephine Tey's first novel, was published in 1929. 

A man, waiting in a queue to see a musical, is killed and no one appears to have noticed the murder or the murderer. Inspector Alan Grant is called in to investigate this baffling case. Unlike some of the later books in the series, this book is definitely a police procedural following Inspector Grant and his team as they endeavour to establish why the man was murdered and by whom.

When the most likely suspect disappears Grant traces him to Scotland where we get to know more about the thoughts and behaviour of this investigator. However when the suspect is captured Grant begins to doubt that they have the right person and now has to prove the innocence of the suspect as well as establish the  identity of a killer. One of the interesting aspects of these novels is observing the techniques used by the police to aid their investigations and the time involved in obtaining information so they can continue investigating the case.

The book has been criticised as the crime is solved more by luck than by police investigation but no doubt this may also happen from time to time in real police investigations. As the investigation continues we get to know more about the victim and one of the themes of the book encourages us to question our views of what we consider to be right and wrong.

A detailed review of this title see the post by Margot Kinberg in the blog, Confessions of a Mystery Novelist.

The singing sands

After recently spending a week in Leicester where some of the time was spent exploring sites relating to Richard III I am currently rereading Daughter of Time, the book which originally got me interested in Richard III. However on the return flight to Australia from a visit to Hawaii I read another Josephine Tey novel, The Singing Sands.

Alan Grant is taking enforced leave from the police force due to his suffering from claustrophobia as part of a nervous breakdown. He travels by train to spend time with his cousin and her family in Scotland but as he leaves the train a body is discovered by the porter. Grant tells the porter to call the police and as he leaves he accidently picks up a newspaper owned by the dead man. Looking at the paper some time later he discovers part of a poem written in pencil, probably by the man in compartment B7. The poem refers to 'the beasts that stalk, the streams that stand, the stones that walk, the singing sand ...that guard the way to Paradise'.

Grant spends the next few weeks recuperating, enjoying Scotland and spending much of his time fishing, often with his cousin's young son. However he cannot forget the young man in the carriage and starts to investigate the death from afar. His investigations take him to the islands, the location of singing sands, and it is during his time there that his health greatly improves. An advertisement in the paper for information about the lines of poetry he discovered brings him in contact with a friend of the dead man and they continue the investigation together.

This was Josephine Tey's last novel and it was published in 1952 after her death. As usual the mystery is secondary to her study of people and places and the examination of why people act the way they do. However the the threads of the mystery and its investigation are gradually revealed and resolved.

The availability of Josephine Tey's books in public libraries may be limited to a couple of titles though some provide access to e-books for some of her works. However the University of Adelaide has made digitised copies of many of Josephine Tey's works freely available for download. Some other titles are available via Project Gutenberg Australia.

Wicked charms

Back home after having spent the past couple of months exploring parts of the UK I thought I would start reading again with something light. Wicked charms is the third title in the Lizzy and Diesel series and Janet Evanovich has co-written the book with Phoef Sutton. Lizzy Tucker and the mysterious Diesel once again team up this time to locate the Stone of Avarice one of the seven Stones of Power that they have been enlisted to retrieve.

Lizzy would rather lead a quiet life making cakes in the local bakery but as she is an Unmentionable with a special power for finding things she has been enlisted by Diesel as his assistant. The story starts when a body is found at the pirate museum and the hunt is then on to locate the stone, a treasure map and the coin that will assist in the reading of the map. Chaos then follows as Lizzy and Diesel attempt to keep ahead of others who are also looking for the Stone of Avarice for their own projects. They are assisted by Glo who also works in the bakery and experiments with magic and Clara who owns the bakery. As you would expect in a Janet Evanovich book there is a cast of of strange characters, not to mention Diesel's monkey, Carl, plus plenty of fast paced madcap action, supernatural elements as well as sexual tension. And there will be more to come.

The First Dismissal

In this essay by Luke Slattery he examines how political and social unrest in England affected events in New South Wales. After the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 many soldiers returned to England to discover the country in recession and jobs disappearing due to the industrial and agrarian revolutions.As unemployment rose, so did political unrest.

In New South Wales the colony was governed by Lachlan Macquarie who 'aimed to rule for all of New South Wales without favour or prejudice'. (p7) To the horror of some of the colonists, this applied to the convicts and emancipist as well as the exclusives. Luke Slattery provides the following example on pages 13 & 14:

Former convicts such as Simeon Lord, the town's richest merchant, and Andrew Thompson, a landowner and prominent figure along the Hawkesbury River, did not owe their wealth to Macquarie. But it was to him that they owed their rising social status. Macquarie appointed them magistrates of their districts and put them in charge of his first infrastructure project: the Sydney-Hawkesbury turnpike road. He befriended them, invited them to his table, and encouraged officers in the military to do the same. Men who would never have amounted to much at home - in separate incidents Lord and Thompson had been convicted of stealing small amounts of cloth- rose to the status of gentlemen in the colony.

Macquarie set out to build a civilised town and employed the services of the convict, Francis Greenway, as architect for his projects. Much of the essay concerns the relationship between Macquarie and Greenway in transforming the appearance of the colony. However New South Wales was meant primarily to be a penal colony and many people in the colony and in England disapproved of Macquarie's actions in turning the colony into a place where people might like to live. The result was the Bigge enquiry when John Thomas Bigge arrived in the colony to make an official report for the government in England.

After more than ten years as Governor, Lachlan Macquarie decided to resign his position and return to the United Kingdom leaving the colony, whether the authorities liked it or not, as a much more livable place. Although many saw Macquarie's departure as expulsion, he had decided to leave some years previously. However if he had not made that decision, no doubt he would have been asked to leave once Bigge's report reached England. Back in England in 1822 Macquarie had to justify his actions to Parliament.

[The author has also written the historical fiction novel, Mrs M, based on this period of Australian history.]

A Forgers Progress: the life of Francis Greenway

Francis Greenway was transported to the colony of New South Wales in 1814. Originally he had received the death penalty for forgery but this was changed to fourteen years transportation. Francis was fortunate as he arrived in the new colony when Lachlan Macquarie was Governor and was attempting to turn the prison settlement of Sydney Cove into a more civilised town. He also believed in trying to give the settlers, emancipists, convicts and exclusives a fair opportunity so when he saw some of the architectural drawings that Francis had brought with him Francis Greenway was chosen as architect for the colony building many fine buildings, some of which remain today.

Alasdair McGregor provides a chronicle of the life of Francis Greenway including his life in England, his trial and journey to Australia, a description of the colony ruled by Macquarie, the work of Greenway and the demise of his later years. He died in 1837, a forgotten man. A series of plates in the centre of the book show illustrations of some of the Greenway designed buildings.

The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England

Ian Mortimer uses this book to take the reader into the world of Medieval England, a period of great change in English history. The reader is introduced to life in the cities and towns as well as the changing life of the countryside. We meet the people and learn about the different occupations. The medieval character is examined including sense of humour, education and knowledge of the wider world. Use of language, measuring time, units of measurement, manners and politeness including how to greet people, shopping and money are described. Clothes you might wear, types of transport available, housing, health and hygiene, legal system and the courts are other topics. The final chapter looks at things people in the Middle Ages could do for entertainment including music and dancing, attending plays, jousting, playing games, partaking in pilgrimages. There is also a section on the literature and poetry of the time. In short this book is a good introduction to how people lived in England, particularly during the fourteenth century.