The Man in the Queue: Josephine Tey

The Man in the Queue was the first mystery novel published by Josephine Tey, and the first to feature Inspector Alan Grant. I read this on a whim, looking for something lighter to read at the same time as I was reading The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel. The lovely cover of the  Collier paperback edition from 1988 on my shelf called to me. It is actually a reread; the last time I read it was back in the early 1990s.

Here is the description from the back of the trade paperback edition:

A long line had formed for the standing-room-only section of the Woffington Theatre. London’s favorite musical comedy of the past two years was finishing its run at the end of the week. Suddenly, the line began to move, forming a wedge before the open doors as hopeful theatergoers nudged their way forward. But one man, his head sunk down upon his chest, slowly sank to his knees and then, still more slowly, keeled over on his face. Thinking he had fainted, a spectator moved to help, but recoiled in horror from what lay before him: the man in the queue had a small silver dagger neatly plunged into his back. 

With the wit and guile that have made Inspector Grant a favorite of mystery fans, the inspector sets about discovering just how a murder occurred among so many witnesses, none of whom saw a thing.

I like Josephine Tey's Inspector Grant. He is intelligent, serious, and doesn't give up. He doesn't even give up when he has caught his quarry, and then begins to wonder if he has made a mistake. I love Tey's writing style, although that is hard to define. There are a lot of descriptions of various locations, in London and surrounding areas, and in Scotland, which sometimes slow down the story, but I enjoy those diversions. 

In Tey's mysteries, there is more focus on the characters and less on the crime and the solution. In this book, there are many secondary characters encountered in the investigation who are well-defined and interesting in their own right. Tey does not always write a puzzle in the fair play tradition. That is definitely true in this book, and I think that is also true in the 2nd Inspector Grant mystery, A Shilling for Candles.

Josephine Tey was a pseudonym used by Elizabeth Mackintosh. She was born in Scotland in 1896 and died in 1952.  For a while she taught physical training at schools in England; later she moved back to Scotland and began her career as a author.

Although this novel is set in London, there are many references to Scotland and Scottish people in the story, and Inspector Grant takes a trip to Scotland to pursue the suspect during the course of the investigation. That part of the story provides a great picture of Scotland in the late 1920's and is very entertaining.

The book was published in 1929, and there were some elements of ethnic prejudices and profiling. 

See also other reviews at The Art of Words and Leaves and Pages.

The edition at the top of the page is the one on my shelf that I started reading. Cover illustration by Pamela Patrick. Later the cover began detaching, and I changed over to this trade paperback edition. It has a very good introduction by Robert Barnard. Cover illustration by Richard Parisi.

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Publisher:   Simon & Schuster, 1995 (orig. pub. 1929)
Length:       254 pages
Format:       Trade paperback
Series:        Inspector Alan Grant, #1
Setting:       England & Scotland
Genre:        Police procedural
Source:       I purchased this book.