The Ivy Tree: Mary Stewart

This story is about a young woman, Mary Grey, who bears a strong resemblance to the heiress to a fortune, Annabel Winslow, who disappeared several years before the story starts. Mary Grey lives in Canada but is visiting Scotland because her ancestors lived there. 

As soon as I read the first few pages of The Ivy Tree, by Mary Stewart, I was pulled into the story. It is rare that I get interested in the characters that early in a book. Partly it was the first person narration by Mary Grey, but also her encounter with Connor Winslow, in which he mistakes her for Annabel. He is convinced that Annabel has returned to the area so that she can take over the estate when her grandfather dies. Connor has been working as the manager of the estate, and believes that he should rightfully inherit it. Eventually she is persuaded to impersonate the heiress in a scheme to get the inheritance.

My Thoughts:

I was not sure if I would like the romantic suspense type of novel as much as I might have when I was younger. It ends up that I liked pretty much everything about The Ivy Tree. I was pulled into the impersonation story from the very beginning. I thought that the main character's voice was done very well. And the plot was very compelling and believable.

I usually don't like TV shows or movies where characters go undercover; the suspense is too much for me. And impersonation stories are very much the same type of thing. This one was very convincing and there were many tense moments for me. 

At about 50 percent into the 400-page book, there is a big surprise that changes everything, and it makes perfect sense. And then there was at least one more major twist at the end but I had pretty much guessed that last one. 

I just cannot say enough good things about this book. The ending was great, the suspense was great, and the writing was beautiful, especially regarding nature and the setting.

I had not realized that there was a connection to Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey. The two books have similarities. I had read Brat Farrar when I was much younger, but I don't remember much about it. Brat Farrar was published in 1949 and The Ivy Tree was published 12 years later in 1961. Brat Farrar is mentioned in The Ivy Tree, as Connor's sister schools Mary Grey in all the facts she needs to know to play the part of Annabel. 

Also, the story begins as Mary Grey stands by a tree near Hadrian's Wall. That doesn't affect the plot much but there is a minor connection.

Also see two other reviews at Clothes in Books (by Moira) and Staircase Wit (by Constance).

Six Degrees of Separation: from Wuthering Heights to Dancing in the Dark

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Every month Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting book this month is Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Brontë. I don't remember ever reading that book, but recently when I read some reviews, it was described as being about obsession and revenge.

1st degree:

I searched on my blog for a book that combined obsession and revenge and the only one that came up was The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake. This book, a part of the Nigel Strangeways series, is widely acknowledged to be a crime classic. But I resisted reading it for years.

The story begins with these lines from Frank Cairnes' journal, in which he plans the death of the person who killed his son. 

"I am going to kill a man. I don’t know his name, I don’t know where he lives, I have no idea what he looks like. But I am going to find him and kill him…"

2nd degree:

I purchased my copy of The Beast Must Die at the Annual Book Sale in September 2019. The same year, I purchased four old paperback editions of books by Mary Stewart at that same book sale. One of them was The Ivy Tree, published in 1961. It is about a young woman, Mary Grey, who has a strong resemblance to the heiress to a fortune, who disappeared years before. She is persuaded to impersonate the heiress in a scheme to get the inheritance.  

3rd degree:

Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar is another impersonation novel, published in 1949. I read that novel but it has been so long that I want to read it again. From what I have read, Brat Farrar was an inspiration for Mary Stewart's book. I have read all of Josephine Tey's mystery novels. She wrote six Inspector Grant novels and two standalone mysteries.

4th degree:

Josephine Tey is the sleuth in a historical crime fiction series by Nicola Upson. I have read the first book in that series, An Expert in Murder. I don't always enjoy mysteries where the sleuth is a real person, and I had reservations about how much the sleuth in this book resembles the real Josephine Tey (whose real name was Elizabeth Mackintosh), but I did find the story compelling and enjoyed the setting, so I had planned to read more of this series. I have four more books from this series on my shelves so I should follow up on that.

5th degree:

Another mystery novel with a real-life author as the sleuth is Jane and the Man of Cloth. In this case the sleuth is Jane Austen. This 2nd book in the series was published in 1997 (and I read my copy in 2004). The 15th and final book in the series was published in 2023. I have only read the first two books but I have read many good things about the series and the way that Jane Austen is handled as a main character, so I may return.

6th degree:

My final book for this Six Degrees is from a historical mystery series that features real-life people as characters, but not as the sleuth. Toby Peters is a private investigator who is often asked to help movie stars of the 1940s with their problems. The first book in the series, Bullet for a Star, features Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, and Peter Lorre. In Dancing in the Dark, the 19th book in the series, Fred Astaire is being harassed by a gangster and his girlfriend. The series is written by one of my favorite authors, Stuart Kaminsky. 

And that concludes my Six Degrees. All my books were mysteries. All of them were either vintage mysteries or historical mysteries. And all of the books were set in the UK except for the very last one. I prefer more variety in my Six Degrees chains, either in genre or setting or both, but these are all good books, so I am happy with the chain.

If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your list take you? Have you read any of these books? 

The next Six Degrees will be on April 4, 2026 and the starting book will be  Virginia Evan's epistolary novel, The Correspondent.

Reading Summary for May 2021

 

I had a very good reading month in May. My big project was reading The Mirror & the Light. Although it was 750 plus pages, it was not the length that bothered me. I just found it to be a depressing read, knowing how the story would end, and I could only read short bits at a time. So I interspersed several lighter books throughout, which is not the way I usually read books. 

General Fiction

A Month in the Country (1980) by J.L. Carr

From the cover of the book: "In J. L. Carr's deeply charged poetic novel, Tom Birkin, a veteran of the Great War and a broken marriage, arrives in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where he is to restore a recently discovered medieval mural in the local church." I enjoyed reading this book immensely; I loved the way it was written and reading about the 1920s in that setting.

Historical Fiction

The Mirror & the Light (2020) by Hilary Mantel

This is the closing book in a trilogy about Henry the VIII and Thomas Cromwell, a subject I knew little about when I first started reading Wolf Hall. It covers Cromwell's later years, following the beheading of Anne Boleyn. As noted above, this is a long book and overall about a depressing subject, so I found it demanding. But definitely worth the effort.

Crime Fiction

Curtain: Poirot's Last Case (1975) by Agatha Christie

This was a darker book than I expected. Both Hastings and Poirot are older, and Poirot has crippling arthritis which limits his ability to get around. Hastings meets Poirot at Styles, the setting of the first mystery in the Poirot series, which is now a guest house. There are several interesting guests: Dr. Franklin, a scientist, and his wife; Hasting's daughter Julia;  Stephen Norton, a bird-watcher; and Sir Carrington, whose home nearby is being renovated.  I liked it, of course, but it was not as much fun as many of the Poirot books. It was much more serious, more like Murder on the Orient Express or Death on the Nile.

Checkmate to Murder (1944) by E.C.R. Lorac

This was an excellent vintage police procedural, set during World War II. Great characters and an interesting plot, and even better, there are several more by this author, easily available. See my review here.

The Man in the Queue (1929) by Josephine Tey

This was a reread, the first mystery novel by Josephine Tey, and the first in the Inspector Alan Grant series. I would like to get back to rereading more of Josephine Tey's mysteries. See my review here.

The Red Box (1937) by Rex Stout

This was another reread. It is an early book in the Nero Wolfe series, #4 following The Rubber Band, which I read in March. A complex story and interesting characters, and I am sure I would not have guessed the culprit except that I had read the books several times before.

So Pretty a Problem (1950) by Francis Duncan

This book is part of the Mordecai Tremaine series. Tremaine is an amateur sleuth, retired from his job as a tobacconist. As this book begins, we find that a controversial artist has been killed by his wife. She says it was an accident, but they were alone so no one can back her up. I enjoyed this  book, I liked the way it was structured. Last year I read Murder for Christmas by the same author and enjoyed it also. I first learned about this series of books from Rick Robinson at Tip the Wink.

READING NEXT?

Currently I am reading The Birdwatcher by William Shaw. I am enjoying it, as I expected, and I hope to finish it tonight. I have no idea how it is going to end.

Next I might read She Came Back by Patricia Wentworth or All Systems Red by Martha Wells or The Small Boat of Great Sorrows by Dan Fesperman. All of these books are on my 20 Books of Summer list.

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.

Reading in April and Crime Fiction Pick of the Month

I finished the month of April having read more books than I expected. In the first 13 days of April, I finished only two books. In the remaining 17 days of the month, I finished an additional seven books. For a total of 9 books in April.

My usual reading is mysteries, but I did include one non-fiction book in that group: Your Flying Car Awaits: Robot Butlers, Lunar Vacations, and Other Dead-Wrong Predictions of the Twentieth Century. The subtitle of the book implies that it focuses on ridiculous predictions and how wacky they were. Many of the "failed" predictions were actually not so wacky. The author put the predictions in the context of the time and who was making the prediction, and where possible explained why the prediction did not pan out. It was an interesting and educational read.

These are the crime fiction books I read this month:

A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey

White Heat by M. J. McGrath

Wall of Eyes by Margaret Millar

Accounting for Murder by Emma Lathen

G is for Gumshoe by Sue Grafton

Where Memories Lie by Deborah Crombie

The Dark Side of the Road by Simon R. Green

Double Indemnity by James M. Cain

I enjoyed all of my mystery reads this month, and especially the ones from the Golden Age period. For my favorite book this month, I will pick A Shilling for Candles, the second mystery novel published by Josephine Tey, and the second book in the Inspector Grant series. I re-read this book for the Past Offences Crime Fiction of the Year Challenge for 1936 and I enjoyed it so much I want to re-read all of her mysteries. Inspector Grant is a wonderful character, but there is a secondary character in this mystery who is especially interesting. That is Erica Burgoyne, the seventeen-year-old daughter of the Chief Constable.

The Crime Fiction Pick of the Month meme is hosted at Mysteries in Paradise. See this month's post for links to other Picks of the Month.

Books of 1936: A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey

A Shilling for Candles was the second mystery novel published by Josephine Tey, and the second book in the Inspector Grant series. I re-read this book for the Past Offences Crime Fiction of the Year Challenge for 1936 and I enjoyed it so much I want to re-read all of her mysteries.

In this novel, the dead body of a young woman is discovered on a beach, and is at first assumed to be a suicide or accidental drowning. It takes awhile to identify the victim. She had been vacationing at a cottage nearby under an assumed name, and the man staying with her claims to know her only by her first name. Eventually the police discover that she is the famous movie actress, Christine Clay. Inspector Grant shows up when evidence is uncovered that points to murder.

I like Josephine Tey's novels because they focus more on the characters, and less on the crime and the solution. Inspector Grant is not your usual police detective, although he is well known and has a good reputation for his work. He agonizes over decisions and how to approach the investigation. In this novel, Erica Burgoyne, the seventeen-year-old daughter of the Chief Constable, and Jammy Hopkins, a reporter, are key characters who give us another view of the world of England in the 1930's. Christine Clay's is also a very well-developed character, even though we don't  encounter her until she is dead. Through the accounts of acquaintances, family and friends, we see a full picture of her and the drawbacks of a life of fame and fortune but little privacy. I cannot leave out Robert Tisdall, the man who was living with Christine at the time of her death. Because of the unusual circumstances, he is immediately a suspect.

Another interesting aspect of this novel is the picture of the world of actors and the theater, which Tey had much experience with. This is a slow-paced but entertaining novel (if the mystery plot is not your major concern), and I am eager to re-read more of the books in the Grant series, to see how they compare. The remainder of the novels were written after World War II and it will be interesting to see how they reflect the differences of that period in England also.

Josephine Tey was a pseudonym used by Elizabeth Mackintosh. She was born in Scotland in 1896 and died in 1952.  She also wrote plays and non-mystery novels under the name Gordon Daviot. Nicola Upson has written a mystery series featuring Tey as the main character. There is an interesting page at Upson's website which talks about Tey's life.

This book was made into a movie, Young and Innocent, by Alfred Hitchcock, which was released in 1937. Based on book reviews I read, the adaptation is very loose but may be entertaining.

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Publisher:   Collier Books, 1988 (orig. pub. 1936)
Length:       226 pages
Format:       Paperback
Series:        Inspector Alan Grant, #2
Setting:       England
Genre:        Police procedural
Source:       I purchased this book.