An Expert in Murder (Josephine Tey)

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A producer Gielgud worked with was Hugh “Binkie” Beaumont; I wonder if John Terry is a reference to Ellen Terry.

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. On board, she meets a young woman, Elspeth Simmons, the adopted daughter of hatmakers from Berwick-upon-Tweed. She had had thirteen months and four hundred and sixty performances to get used to being the author of the most popular play in London, but fame still tasted strange to her.As long as it doesn’t take you away from the stage,’ she replied, and–as she noticed Josephine’s surprise–looked aghast at her own familiarity. Tey wrote several mystery novels, two of my childhood favourites being THE FRANCHISE AFFAIR, about a young girl who accuses two spinster ladies of abducting her, and BRAT FARRAR, about an heir to a fortune who is a possible impostor. The two strike up a friendship on the journey, as the girl is a fan of Tey's work, and is on her way to see the play again.

While the heroine falls conventionally into the killer's clutches before a solution many will anticipate, the engaging prose will leave even readers unfamiliar with Tey's fiction eagerly looking forward to the next in the series.She still looked more like a school teacher or one of those solitary women you saw writing letters in the corner of a hotel lounge. Her friend Archie, a Scotland Yard detective, is revealed to be the inspiration for Tey's Inspector Grant, and plot points and other details from Tey's own novels come into play here. She befriends a young woman fan on the train, who is then murdered in a fashion that points towards the play and so “Josephine” and Archie are drawn into the investigation. Don’t forget that in the 1930s it was a criminal offence and even in theatrical circles I would imagine there was much more discretion than is displayed here!