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3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Given that I didn’t like Ms. Pym Disposes by Tey much, I was rather nervous about reading more from her. However this book surprised me with its wonderful writing, atmosphere and twists! This is the Tey I love!
The characters are well drawn, and the unpredictability of plot enhances the narrative. You never know quite what to think and Tey is excellent at leading you down one path only to switch suddenly to another. My only crib is that even though this is included in the Inspector Grant series, he’s hardly in it, with most of the detection being done by Robert Blair, a lawyer who is drawn into a strange case of a young girl who accuses a mother/daughter duo of kidnapping and physical abuse. The atmosphere in the book comes mainly from the fact that the mother/daughter duo are considered weird in their village and live in an isolated house called The Franchise. If it’s not exactly sinister, it’s certainly mysterious.
I enjoyed this one immensely, although I missed Inspector Grant!
The characters are well drawn, and the unpredictability of plot enhances the narrative. You never know quite what to think and Tey is excellent at leading you down one path only to switch suddenly to another. My only crib is that even though this is included in the Inspector Grant series, he’s hardly in it, with most of the detection being done by Robert Blair, a lawyer who is drawn into a strange case of a young girl who accuses a mother/daughter duo of kidnapping and physical abuse. The atmosphere in the book comes mainly from the fact that the mother/daughter duo are considered weird in their village and live in an isolated house called The Franchise. If it’s not exactly sinister, it’s certainly mysterious.
I enjoyed this one immensely, although I missed Inspector Grant!
It’s official: I like Josephine Tey. It’s also official: I am not a fan of the classic British mystery novel.
Josephine Tey is yet another writer I’ve been meaning to come back to for a long time. I finished The Daughter of Time in one day, two separate sittings. The premise was simple but the execution took my breath away. I gave myself a headache straining to read from page-to-page.
The Franchise Affair is a slightly more conventional mystery albeit with an interesting twist: a young girl claims to have been held hostage by two women at a remote house called The Franchise. The women, a mother and daughter, are both single with the latter being over 40. Obviously, this led to suspicion that they were lonely and kidnapped the girl for comfort. Only, they claim to have never met her. So they enlist an unassuming local solicitor to help them with the case.
Having read several Agatha Christie novels and others of that genre through the years, I can finally admit I’m not a fan of these kinds of books. The language is too dry, the prose too dense, the thrills often too cheap to wade through everything else. Tey is no different but there’s an undercurrent of emotion running through this that I haven’t experienced from her contemporaries. She really gets the desperation and loneliness these people face and it made me empathize with them more. While I didn’t pour through the pages like I did with Daughter of Time, there was enough here to hold my interest.
The ending is interesting. I’m usually disappointed with endings to mystery novels and this was no exception. However, the way it was done left me slightly less annoyed than I would have felt otherwise. Tey is a fun writer. But it might take me awhile before I try another one of hers.
Josephine Tey is yet another writer I’ve been meaning to come back to for a long time. I finished The Daughter of Time in one day, two separate sittings. The premise was simple but the execution took my breath away. I gave myself a headache straining to read from page-to-page.
The Franchise Affair is a slightly more conventional mystery albeit with an interesting twist: a young girl claims to have been held hostage by two women at a remote house called The Franchise. The women, a mother and daughter, are both single with the latter being over 40. Obviously, this led to suspicion that they were lonely and kidnapped the girl for comfort. Only, they claim to have never met her. So they enlist an unassuming local solicitor to help them with the case.
Having read several Agatha Christie novels and others of that genre through the years, I can finally admit I’m not a fan of these kinds of books. The language is too dry, the prose too dense, the thrills often too cheap to wade through everything else. Tey is no different but there’s an undercurrent of emotion running through this that I haven’t experienced from her contemporaries. She really gets the desperation and loneliness these people face and it made me empathize with them more. While I didn’t pour through the pages like I did with Daughter of Time, there was enough here to hold my interest.
The ending is interesting. I’m usually disappointed with endings to mystery novels and this was no exception. However, the way it was done left me slightly less annoyed than I would have felt otherwise. Tey is a fun writer. But it might take me awhile before I try another one of hers.
mysterious
funny
lighthearted
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
josephine tey may have been tory-ish and clearly didn’t like the Irish … but her writing <3 gorgeous and witty and brilliant. such a good detective novel. my only complaint is that kevin and robert didn’t get together at the end bc they were clearly into each other; or at least robert was in love with kevin.
This book is a lark on a breeze, but hard to ignore the unchecked class and gender bias. Still, on its whole, worth the two afternoons to find out how a girl tries to get away with a lie, and the forces that rally against her.
It's hardly fair to call this an Alan Grant novel, as he's almost entirely absent from the text, and the author definitely has some class prejudices (and some odd theories about blue-eyed people), but despite all that, it's quite a fantastic novel. It's tightly written and enthralling the whole way through, and is far closer to its characters than the previous Tey novels I've read.
A magnificent performance. It would be difficult to think of a novel that captured Midcentury Albion in quite such sassy and penetrating detail.