Josephine Tey is one of my favorite authors, easily the equal of Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie. Sadly, she wrote only eight mystery novels. I find half of those eight (Miss Pym Disposes, The Franchise Affair, Brat Farrar and The Daughter of Time) absolutely brilliant and another (To Love and Be Wise) very, very good indeed. Unfortunately, I find Man in the Queue, her first novel, merely good.
Which doesn't mean it isn't worth reading. I was struck at the start at just how strong is Tey's prose, as she describes a queue of people waiting to buy tickets for a London musical comedy. When the line moves forward, a man keels over, a stiletto in his back, and the seven people near him are detained by the police but all of them claim to have witnessed nothing. As it turns out, the corpse has nothing to identify him, so the first order of business is finding out just who was the man in the queue.
Investigating is Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, and he's a rather bland figure in this novel. Likable, but he doesn't have the quirks or emotional complexities or flashy brilliance that mark out a Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot or Lord Peter Wimsey from the start. There are also ethnic stereotypes expressed by Grant in this novel, no question. The introduction by Robert Barnard that appears in new editions of the Tey novels, even accuses Tey of being anti-semitic and anti-working class. I don't see that in my reread of four of the Tey novels so far, and don't remember it in the ones I haven't read for decades. However, I'd say there's a difference between a novel or its author being bigoted, and the characters expressing prejudice. And I'd note that Grant's assumptions based on such stereotypes prove wrong.
There are other flaws. Towards the end traces of first person appear out of the blue, as if there was originally a frame that was dropped but a few "I" statements got missed being edited out. I think the main complaint veteran mystery readers will have is that Tey doesn't play fair and allow you to solve the mystery along with her detective. The resolution, although it doesn't conflict with what we've known and makes sense of the complexities of the case, does come out of the blue. I still enjoyed this--Tey is always a pleasure to read. And if I don't rate this higher, that's because her first novel really just doesn't match her best. She's one who got stronger as she went along. But that just means that if you start here, you only have better to look forward to.
