The Man in the Queue

Rating:
Summary: My First Tey and the First Book of 2003 for Me.
Review: I read, this my first Tey mystery, because all mystery afficiondos should at least sample her writing. She is famous in the mystery world, and you need to read her in order to determine how we got to where we did with mystery writing. I enjoyed the story. She certainly puts enough twists and turns in her plots. The book is somewhat dated (it was written in 1929) after all, but she has a lot of talent. I liked Inspector Grant even though he really didn't solve this puzzler, but it was fun following him around in his quest for the killer. This is a rather unique format for a "locked room" mystery since the victim was stabbed outside in a theatre queue, but it appeared that no one had the opportunity to do the deed. I want to continue to read the rest of her books. She writes fairly complex stories.

Rating:
Summary: My First Tey and the First Book of 2003 for Me.
Review: I read, this my first Tey mystery, because all mystery afficiondos should at least sample her writing. She is famous in the mystery world, and you need to read her in order to determine how we got to where we did with mystery writing. I enjoyed the story. She certainly puts enough twists and turns in her plots. The book is somewhat dated (it was written in 1929) after all, but she has a lot of talent. I liked Inspector Grant even though he really didn't solve this puzzler, but it was fun following him around in his quest for the killer. This is a rather unique format for a "locked room" mystery since the victim was stabbed outside in a theatre queue, but it appeared that no one had the opportunity to do the deed. I want to continue to read the rest of her books. She writes fairly complex stories.

Rating:
Summary: An All-Too Human Detective
Review: Josephine Tey is often touted as a Thinking Man's Mystery Writer, a more literary version of such contemporaries as Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh. This is the first of her books that I've read, and she was indeed a splendid writer. But the mark of any good mystery author (as far as I'm concerned) is the ability to dazzle the audience with the denouement, usually at the hands of the brilliant amateur or professional sleuth who's trying to solve the case. Tey's Detective Grant seems remarkably able at the start of the book to pull together loose strands of information and reach those impressive conclusions that readers expect from fictional detectives. But the actual solution of the whodunit is literally handed to him (by a minor character who simply confesses out of the blue) and is due neither to his brains nor his instincts. It comes, in fact, at a time in the story when Grant is absolutely stuck and has no idea what to do next. By this time he's made as many mistakes and ignored as many important clues as he's followed. Perhaps this was Tey's way of showing us the fallibility and humaness of the police, but is that what we want in our fictional sleuths? Give me someone omniscient like Poirot or Peter Wimsey any day.

Rating:
Summary: An All-Too Human Detective
Review: Reading this book in context is the key. It's a first book and it was written in 1929 (before the crash). Yes, the language is of a different place and time. Some of it is awkward for a modern ear (the "foreigner" phrase in particular). Still, I enjoy being transported to a different world once in awhile and reading writing from that time is different than when a modern writer writes of history.

The plotting on this is pretty simple - finite number of suspects and such. The ending came a little bit too much from left field for my taste.

Bottom line - an adequate first effort. Don't judge Tey on the basis of this book -- later books are much better.

Rating:
Summary: Dated but a good read still
Review: Reading this book in context is the key. It's a first book and it was written in 1929 (before the crash). Yes, the language is of a different place and time. Some of it is awkward for a modern ear (the "foreigner" phrase in particular). Still, I enjoy being transported to a different world once in awhile and reading writing from that time is different than when a modern writer writes of history.

The plotting on this is pretty simple - finite number of suspects and such. The ending came a little bit too much from left field for my taste.

Bottom line - an adequate first effort. Don't judge Tey on the basis of this book -- later books are much better.

Rating:
Summary: If this is a classic, give me the moderns.
Review: Robert Barnard, in his intro to the Scribner's edition, writes that Tey shares some of what he feebly calls the "less attractive attitudes" of her Golden Age contemporaries, among which he includes anti-Semitism and contempt for the working class. He neglected to mention xenophobia, so Tey on page 75 writes of "the foreigner's ratlike preference for the sewers to the open". Clearly Tey was a nasty piece of work, which the reader could possibly overlook had the book overwhelming redeeming features (it doesn't).

There is one peculiarity, which is the sporadic presence of a first-person narrator. This "I" appears only three times in the book, very briefly, and the reader is given no indication as to who this person is, nor their relationship to the detective, Grant. Anyway, the latter is given almost superhuman "intuitive" powers by Tey, which fail, however, to lead him to the murderer. Not surprising, since the perpetrator emerges to confess out of nowhere, making a mockery of the investigations Grant has been undertaking thus far. The motivation is suspect too, as there are any number alternatives to murder open to the killer.

The structure of a piece of jewelery is significant (with hindsight). Unfortunately, Tey blunders because no item of this kind is created in the way which would satisfy this element of her plot.

The book has been described as undated, but the relationship between the police and criminals as presented is preposterous for any age, including 1929. Police, according to Tey, prefer to be injured in the line of duty rather than arrest someone who submits without a fight: "It is an unlovely job to arrest a craven. A police officer would much sooner be hacked on the shins than clasped about the knees". Earlier in the book, a vicious American criminal is requsted - there's no other word for it - to give Grant some help identifying someone. He calls Grant when he remembers the person: "I say, Inspector, this is Miller speaking...[he gives the info]... Don't mention it. I'm pleased to be able to help". Yes, a most authentic picture, what?

The only thing which elevates this book above the utterly worthless is Tey's descriptive powers, which are good, and which justify the two stars I give it. On the basis of this book Tey had no business writing mysteries at all, and maybe should have become what Anthony Boucher used to call a "straight" novelist. Dashiell Hammett's THE MALTESE FALCON was published in the same year as this, and provides a contrast in vigor and authenticity which consigns Tey's relic to the dustbin of crime fiction.

Rating:
Summary: The Man in the Queue, written in 1929, is amazingly undated.
Review: The "Man in the Queue", by Josephine Tey, commences on London's West Side, where "Didn't You Know?", the hit musical, is in the last week of its run. Its newly famous star, Ray Marcable, who is London's darling, is leaving for America to seek even greater fame and fortune there. The show has been sold out for weeks, but there is a huge line (the queue of the title) outside, waiting for a chance to get same day only seats for the show. The people in line have been waiting several hours, on the whole good-naturedly, but there is considerable pushing and shoving and re-aligning as the line finally begins to move forward. When a middle-aged woman reaches the ticket booth, she indignantly turns to say something to the man who is pushing hard against her back and is horrified when he falls to the ground dead with a silver dagger sticking out of his back. No one can say when the dead man was stabbed, for the crush of the crowd has supported and carried him forward for some time

When his body is examined by the police, the young man is revealed to be carrying no identification, and has no tags or marks in his clothes. The only item of interest is a service revolver in his pocket, with fingerprints on it that prove not to be the victim's. Inspector Grant of Scotland Yard is assigned the case and the remainder of the book is an absorbing police procedural documenting the painstaking process of his quest to discover first the victim's identity and then his murderer. The search truly does become a quest for Grant, who is moved by something in the face of the victim and angered by the anonymity and callousness of his end.

Although The Man in the Queue was written almost 70 years ago, in 1929, it has aged amazingly well and will not be read as a quaint period piece, even though the war that many of the male characters fought in and the female ones nursed in is The Great War, WWI. One reason for the lack of datedness in the book is the fact that although Tey was writing in the Golden Age of British mysteries, her novels are driven more by the personalities and motivations of her characters than by the tricky kind of puzzles that depend on timetables and exotic poisons. What causes people to commit evil acts is more interesting to her than merely naming a villain. In fact, the subtext of The Man in the Queue is the question of whether there is a villain in the story at all.

Rating:
Summary: Very Disatisfying Mystery
Review: To my mind, the basic understanding between a mystery writer and his/her reader is that an alert reader will be able to guess part, if not all, of the solution before the mystery unravels and the author reveals all. On that ground, Tey fails. The ultimate solution comes out of left field, makes a mockery of extensive investigation along many promising lines of questioning, and leaves the reader wondering -- why did I bother? If you want to read Tey, read Daughter of Time, which is much livelier. On the strength of that book, I bought all of her others, and read Man in the Queue and Shilling for Candles -- now the books are in the recycling bin. Not worth my time!

Rating:
Summary: Very Disatisfying Mystery
Review: To my mind, the basic understanding between a mystery writer and his/her reader is that an alert reader will be able to guess part, if not all, of the solution before the mystery unravels and the author reveals all. On that ground, Tey fails. The ultimate solution comes out of left field, makes a mockery of extensive investigation along many promising lines of questioning, and leaves the reader wondering -- why did I bother? If you want to read Tey, read Daughter of Time, which is much livelier. On the strength of that book, I bought all of her others, and read Man in the Queue and Shilling for Candles -- now the books are in the recycling bin. Not worth my time!

Rating:
Summary: good writing, mediocre mystery
Review: Yeah, JT can write okay. The book wasn't boring. But as a mystery, this was a loser. The detective never solves the case, the killer simply confesses at the end. And there is no way a reader could remotely have deduced the outcome. I found it a big letdown after 200 pages of reading. Tey is highly regarded, but it probably isn't on account of this book.