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ruthiella 's review for:
The Franchise Affair
by Josephine Tey
I am participating in the 2016 Back to the Classic Challenge hosted by Karen on the blog Books and Chocolate. This title fills the category of Classic Detective Novel. This is the fourth Tey mystery that I have read and I can say that I am impressed at how they each have been very different from each other. The Franchise Affair is billed as an Inspector Grant mystery, but actually, he is barely in it. Instead, the “detective” in this case is an amateur sleuth: Robert Blair is an unmarried, middle aged small town solicitor whose routine is rather thrillingly disrupted when a local mother and daughter are accused of kidnapping and enslaving a 16 year old-school girl.
I enjoyed the mystery side of the story alright. I thought though the plot seemed a little familiar (turns out it is based on a real event that took place in the 1700s and I read a Guardian article written by Sarah Waters about the book ages ago which is really excellent – go read it: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/30/sarah-waters-books ). What I found a little hard to swallow in the book is characters who think they can tell a criminal by way their eyes are set or by the shape of their forehead, etc., that smacks too much of pseudo-sciences such as phrenology. So I read much of this book with an entire salt cellar. There is a lot of classism and virulent hatred directed toward girls who are perceived as being no better than they ought to be.
I enjoyed the mystery side of the story alright. I thought though the plot seemed a little familiar (turns out it is based on a real event that took place in the 1700s and I read a Guardian article written by Sarah Waters about the book ages ago which is really excellent – go read it: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/30/sarah-waters-books ). What I found a little hard to swallow in the book is characters who think they can tell a criminal by way their eyes are set or by the shape of their forehead, etc., that smacks too much of pseudo-sciences such as phrenology. So I read much of this book with an entire salt cellar. There is a lot of classism and virulent hatred directed toward girls who are perceived as being no better than they ought to be.