A review by deegee24
The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey

3.0

Starts out strong but the criminal investigation doesn't reveal very much and the book gets mired in right-wing crankiness. You see, it's the fake news media who are unfairly prejudiced against the landed gentry, slandering them and inciting mob violence against them. Inspector Grant only appears briefly and somewhat pointlessly, as if Tey were merely accommodating the wishes of her publisher to market the book as an Inspector Grant mystery. Instead, the main investigator is a solicitor named Robert Blair whose initial hunch about the case proves more or less correct. Blair is a clever investigator but otherwise pretty dull. The best part of the book is its portrait of postwar suburban England, a time when old country manors like the Franchise were quickly becoming relics of the distant past.