No classic detective fiction aficionado will want to miss Upson’s compelling sequel to 2008’s An Expert in Murder, which introduced mystery author Josephine Tey (1896–1952) as sleuth. Interesting mystery that makes Josephine Tey a fictional character caught up in the middle of a strangely elaborate murder in London's West End. He suddenly had an image of his down-to-earth sergeant rushing home from the Yard every night to devour the latest thriller by his fireside. The novel's backdrop is the hit of the 1934 West End season: Tey's Richard of Bordeaux, a success so considerable that groups of supporters attended multiple performances and - one of many striking period details - souvenir dolls of the characters were marketed. This first tale starts with “Josephine” travelling down from her home in Scotland to sort out some theatrical business concerning her successful play “Richard of Bordeaux”.

Let’s go and have something to eat,’ she suggested to Elspeth, conscious that the young woman’s enthusiasm for her work was beginning to wear a little thin with everyone else in the compartment. Upson has had the wonderful idea of creating a detective novel in which the central character is Tey herself, with the setting being London's theatreland during the closing weeks of the West End run of her phenomenally successful play Richard of Bordeaux. Elspeth studied the menu and, when the waiter arrived, chose a no-nonsense steak and kidney pudding. This book's literary import is the author Elizabeth Mackintosh (1896-1952), who published mystery fiction as Josephine Tey, in reality purely a publishing pseudonym but given to her by Upson as a character name.It has been lauded for its frank portrayal of homosexuality, but some reviews say it has failed to cast any light on Tey herself. Upson doles out period detail, not in a surge of encyclopedic re-telling,but as a backdrop for the scenes as they play out, providing the clues needed to piece together the compulsion that drives someone to murder. One of the characters murdered is the play's producer, who has to be fictionalized because the real producer lived on long after the play had closed. When Simmons is found brutally murdered—stabbed with a hatpin, posed with some dolls and partially shaved—after arrival at King's Cross, Tey's Scotland Yard friend, Insp. he would consider the most appropriate path to his own redemption") in the interests of tension rather than convincing psychology.

As the train moved south, effortlessly eating into four hundred miles or so of open fields and closed communities, she noticed that spring had come early to England–as quick to grace the gentle countryside as it had been to enhance the drama of the hills against a Highland sky.

The man investigating the death is Detective Inspector Archie Penrose and he's convinced that the murder is connected to Richard of Bordeaux and also that Josephine Tey's life is in danger. I’ve thought about it a bit and come up with a number of reasons why I didn’t get on with this book (and I really did try – sat down and read one-third of it in one go to see if I hadn’t tried hard enough last time). She removed her hat, then looked round anxiously for somewhere to put it before the waiter came to her rescue and took it from her with a wink. I know she is based on a real-life person, but she was a dry as a stack of toast served at a wedding reception. The short version of the story is that OH got me the fourth book in the series for Christmas because it features Portmeirion, which we both love.

I wasn’t totally comfortable with using a real author as a fictional character, but maybe if it pushed a few people towards her books it wasn’t entirely a bad thing. It spoke to the unbridgeable divide between those who’d experienced the trenches and the tunnels those who hadn’t. I don’t suppose you could sign a copy of the programme for him and leave it at stage door, could you? Josephine Tey was a pseudonym used by a shy woman for her detective novels, and who wrote her plays under a male pseudonym. I did love the feel of the traces of the First World War and its effects since were still leaving their marks on all the characters there was a sadness to it and it added a certain something to the book.This novel takes mystery author, Josephine Tey, and puts her centre stage in a real life crime novel. Thoughts and actions put in the mind of Josephine Tey and if you read these books you might think she actually thought and behaved like this.