An Expert in Murder (Josephine Tey)

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With a bereavement in the First World War and the early death of her mother, Tey had her fair share of unhappiness, but no woman of her generation – forced to live through two devastating world conflicts – could have remained immune to tragedy. Having to return home before she was thirty, and abandoning a career as a physical training instructress may, at first, have felt like a sacrifice, but the success of her writing and a number of shrewd investments soon guaranteed that her independence would never be an issue, and she enjoyed a rare and enviable freedom. She was a frequent visitor to London, where she stayed at her Club and was sought-after company, and travelled often in Europe; even her Inverness life, so often portrayed as one long round of duty and domesticity, was lived on her own terms: ‘I found that the “going out to tea” business would leave me no life of my own at all if I didn’t do something drastic,’ she admitted frankly in a letter. ‘So I decided to go nowhere . . . This was held to be slightly queer – in those days no one knew that I “wrote” and so I had no right to be queer – but it has worked out very well in practice.” This is an involved plot, which, as so many Golden Age mysteries really do, has its roots in the First World War. The shadow of this conflict lays over the whole novel and adds a darkness to the storyline. I listened to this on audio and Sandra Duncan read this very well. It was an enjoyable book, despite my issues with it. If you enjoy this novel, you might also like, “A Talent for Murder,” by Andrew Wilson, which features Agatha Christie in a fictional setting. However, what is a little rarer in cosies was the graphic and gruesome portrayal of the murders and the murder scenes (the placement of the dolls in particular made me wonder if this was a horror story for a moment). This seemed odd for the genre (which this book is obviously being marketed towards). If I’d been involved in the editing, I’d have advised that this, along with the amount of swearing, should have been reined in for a cosy's target audience.

The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow,” Knox decreed. “The ‘stupid friend’ of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader…. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.” The first World War, though over now by several years, looms over the lives of the characters, and factors into the actions of various suspects, including the lives of the family of the young woman Josephine meets on a train at the beginning of the book, and who spends several enjoyable hours chatting with Josephine, before the young woman is murdered. the best version of each episode that I could, there may be better copies of some recordings available from collectors and dealers, and I encourage you to reach out to them if you are so inclined. If they are not in the public domain, notify me and they will be deleted Overall, I found An Expert in Murder a fascinating and rewarding read. I'm deducting half a star on the basis that I found one of the motives given (Marta's rationale for wanting Josephine killed) fairly unconvincing, in the light of surrounding circumstances. I look forward to catching up on the remainder of the series, and in particular I'm eagerly anticipating the release of book #10, Dear Little Corpses in May 2022.

Upson changes point of view from Josephine and Archie to a lot of the minor characters. This was obviously to increase the suspect pool but, at times, I found it was too much. Upson would have done better to have just Josephine or Archie discover some of the mystery plot points by actually detecting rather than revealing them to the reader via supporting characters.

It appears I may have found that most rare of things: a literary tribute (a.k.a. fan-fiction) that worked for me! and intrigue, and more death follows. We meet the leads in the play, Johnny and Lydia; the two are presumably based on the real life leads in the best-selling run, John Gielgud, whose career it, arguably, made, and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies.Gregarious only within a small circle, however: Mairi MacDonald found Tey’s unwillingness to meet strangers “almost pathological in its intensity.” Having decided to model Brat Farrar’s physical appearance on that of a well-known racehorse dealer, she asked her friend Caroline Ramsden to find out all she could about him. “It isn’t a question of wanting to meet him—which I should actively dislike,” she wrote to Ramsden. “It is a quite detached curiosity about him…. What he thinks, reads (I suppose he can?), says, eats; whether he likes his bacon frizzly or flaccid…. It always happens with someone I see casually, like that; and once my curiosity is satisfied my interest finishes. But until the picture is complete the curiosity is devouring.” Penrose suspects that the war may hold the key to his double murder investigation. Meanwhile, Hedley White, one of the chief suspects, reappears. The morbidity of that postwar world is something about which PD James has written in non-fiction; and she, perhaps rather more than Tey, seems to have been the main literary inspiration for Upson. DI Penrose, a death-haunted bachelor who asks penetrating questions in a gentle voice, feels like a relative of Adam Dalgliesh; like James, Upson likes to provide an elegant inventory of the architectural and interior design features of the story's locations. As for this book's Josephine Tey? I will probably give the next book in the series a go. Maybe some of the problems I have this time around will be less noticeable as Upson settles more confidently into the series. An Expert in Murder is a historical crime novel by Nicola Upson, published on March 6, 2008. [1] Plot [ edit ]

Situating a real Golden Age mystery writer in a story where they solve murders seems to be a thing now; in this first book in Nicola Upson’s series, author and playwright Josephine Tey becomes central to a murder case involving her, a young woman, and the members of a theatre. Nicola Upson took what research she could get and jumped on the idea of making this mystery woman the star of a semi-biographical murder mystery. (The murder is no biographical...I think.) For me this worked really well. It had biographical fact mixed with imagined scenes, but because we know so little about Tey, these elements change over seamlessly in Upson recreation of the 1930s London West End theatre-land, which happens to be one of my favourite places, too. One of my favorite parts of the mystery was the setting. Upson places all the action in the West End theaters of the early '30s, where Tey would have been during her playwright years, and the variety of theatrical denizens pushed it right into "this is a keeper" series for me. Mix a little Hollywood or theater in my mysteries and I'm a happy reader! which seems to have been carefully planned. Here enters Detective Inspector Archie Penrose, an old acquaintance of Tey's, the best friend of her lover, whom Penrose saw die at the Somme.The parts in the final chapters focusing on Josephine and Archie’s almost romance even became boring. A shame, because I had enjoyed their scenes together up to that point. On the one hand we've got a totally cool concept. The really very talented Nicola Upson has taken the very real Josephine Tey, a mystery author and playwright, and turned her into the very kind of detective she once wrote about. With this particular book she's gotten even more meta by setting it in the midst of the run of "Richard of Bordeaux" the super successful very play Tey really did write in the 1930's. Tey meets a young fan of the play, which is about to close and go on tour, on the train, strikes up an immediate friendship and then the girl is promptly murdered in a weird, dramatic way. Another huge issue I had with the book was the amount of chapters I had to wade through after the crime was solved. I have discovered I am more of a fan of finding out whodunnit and closing the book. Upson went into great detail of the murderer’s motivations and reasons for committing the crime, along with the affects this had on the other characters. It went on for several chapters and I think this should have been culled down considerably.

Penrose waits for an opportunity to speak to impresario Bernard Aubrey, but tragedy is about to strike at the theatre.

An Expert In Murder

I sound cynical. But it was cute. It's just such a well used plot now you can't really describe it without sounding cynical. It's a cozy. And we all know how cozies end. And they all sound a little lame when you describe them. Tey herself had no desire to be “kept.” Few photographs of her exist, and by dividing her life into discrete spheres she ensured that no one could know her too intimately. (One need hardly add that she never married.) To date, more than 60 years after her death—uniquely among the queens of the golden age—there is no biography (although one is due out in the fall). Oh, and her name wasn’t Josephine Tey. Her literary friends called her Gordon, but that wasn’t her name, either.