A Shilling for Candles

Written by Josephine Tey

Narrated by Karen Cass

The second book in the Inspector Alan Grant series.

Beneath the sea cliffs of the south coast, suicides are a sad but common fact. Yet even the hardened coastguard knows something is wrong when a beautiful young film actress is found lying dead on the beach one morning, even though the area is notorious for such incidents.

However, it soon becomes clear that darker motives were afoot, and potential suspects in the death of Christine Clay stack up at a rapid pace. As the case grows murkier, the man who spent the last week of Clay’s life living with her in a remote cottage goes on the run, and Inspector Alan Grant must race to uncover the truth.

A Shilling for Candles was the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's Young and Innocent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SNR Audio
• Release date: Jan 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781915268457

Josephine Tey

Josephine Tey, author of The Daughter of Time and The Franchise Affair, was born Elizabeth MacKintosh in Inverness in Scotland in 1896. She trained and worked as a teacher before returning to her family home to look after her elderly parents. It was there that she took up writing. Although she described her crime writing, written under the pen name Josephine Tey, as ‘my weekly knitting’ she was and is recognized as a major writer of the Golden Age of Crime writing. She was also successful as a novelist and playwright, writing under the name of Gordon Daviot. Her plays were performed in London and on Broadway. A fiercely private woman, she died at her sister’s home in 1952.

Reviews for A Shilling for Candles

[clairemays · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So much fun. Delightful cast of characters and storytelling of the first order. Really happy to have "discovered" Josephine Teys and see there is a whole series to enjoy!
I do just wish that if publishers are hiring a voice artist that they'd choose one who has studied her art: it must be possible with time to learn to do accents and to distinguish characters so that dialogue becomes dialogue. A few, like Erika, are exquisitely done but the rest are just read out as if they came out of a package.