The Man in the Queue

By Josephine Tey

The captivating debut of Inspector Grant, one of fiction’s greatest detectives.
 
As a crowd gathers excitedly to wait for a highly anticipated theatre performance, something transpires to put a damper on their evening—murder. A man in the queue is found dead, stabbed with a stiletto, and only Scotland Yard’s Inspector Grant can solve the mystery.
 
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• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: May 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781551999678

Josephine Tey

Josephine Tey began writing full-time after the successful publication of her first novel, The Man in the Queue (1929), which introduced Inspector Grant of Scotland Yard. She died in 1952, leaving her entire estate to the National Trust.

Reviews for The Man in the Queue

[therebelprince · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Tey was a fantastic writer, and her mystery novels are peppered with beautiful set-pieces, elegant descriptions and minor characters sketched with scythe-like precision. Her concept of the investigator who often makes mistakes and has to recalibrate is also fantastic, and the novel inadvertently has become a piece of historical writing: it's thoroughly enjoyable to keep reminding oneself that Grant can't just use a mobile phone, or look up a suspect's address in "the system". Very engaging.

I will say the ending is rather abrupt, in contradistinction to the sometimes languid, well-paced rest of the novel. And, to be frank, Tey doesn't do a good job of hiding a major clue which - annoyingly - Grant doesn't seem to pick up! The clue doesn't reveal the killer, but it certainly points an arrow in a general direction. I hope that Tey meant for us to pick up on things that Grant doesn't, but I'm not so sure in this particular interest.

But anyhow, she's great, and all of her books are worth reading on their own merits.

[ffortsa · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I read this many years ago, along with Tey's other Alan Grant books, and remember loving it. But this reread showed all the faults. Stereotypes and prejudices abound, Grant overtly dismisses many cues, fails to reinterview interested parties, and misreads many clues. I knew way before the end who was really pertinent to the murder, and only couldn't put my finder on the doer because the person in question was so 'disguised' as harmless.If I'd read this today for the first time, I wouldn't have bothered with the following books, and missed [The Daughter of Time], which I remember quite fondly. But I don't think it worthwhile to reread the series unless I'm caught in a snowstorm with only old mysteries on the shelf.

[mrsrk-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another excellent Josephine Tey (aka Gordon Daviot). This is the first starring Inspector Alan Grant. A man is murdered in line and his neighbors claim they saw nothing. In her next stories of Inspector Grant you will notice a marked difference; perhaps because this was Tey's first novel? In my opinion A Shilling for Candles offers a much more seasoned Tey, being that it was written seven years later. Nevertheless, everything I read from her was worth--my all time favorite being The Franchise Affair.

[alexhunter-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Excellent read. Well paced English mystery.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Rather a disappointment. I had looked forward to reading this book, remembering how much I enjoyed Tey's "The Daughter of Time" which I read as a teenager more than thirty years.Sadly this book had noting of the sterling qualities of "The Daughter of Time", and subsided into mindless tweeness lacking any semblance of feasible plot or plausible characters.

[lisamaria_c · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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 two others (To Love and Be Wise, The Singing Sands) 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.

[mstrust · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The introduction to Tey's sleuth,Inspector Alan Grant, who I loved so much in Daughter of Time. In this book, Tey's first published, Grant must figure out who stabbed an apparently friendless man in the line for a popular London musical.While I felt it dragged on a little, I can see how this book launched Tey's career. The ending really was unforeseeable so the mystery is there until the end. I'll continue with the other Grant mysteries.

[wisewoman_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Man in the Queue, first published in 1929, is Josephine Tey's first novel. It introduces Inspector Alan Grant, a dapper little Scotland Yard man with a keen eye for detail. When a man is murdered while waiting in the queue for a popular play, Grant is given the case. But how often is a man murdered — with a dagger, no less — in such a public place? There are a hundred suspects, and none at all. (Please note that there are mild spoilers in this review.)It's interesting that Tey should start her mysteries with her detective's failure to unravel the case. Grant does have an uneasy feeling about the man he tracks down for the murder, but besides that he really doesn't figure out the tangle. I think I like that, actually. Grant can make mistakes like any other person; he isn't the omniscient Holmes or Poirot who always knows the answer and dazzles us all senseless at the end. Tey muses on the fact that an innocent man would have been hanged but for "a woman's fair dealing." It is astonishing (and sobering) how convincing a case can be built from circumstantial evidence. Sometimes justice does miscarry.And that's what I've come to appreciate about Tey, who is certainly not as flashy as some of her fellow murder-mystery authors. Her stories feel like they really could happen. The detective makes real mistakes. The events are mundane and the murders generally unspectacular. But through these stories the characters become more memorable because they don't have to compete with the staging of the murder or live up to the stereotype of the superhuman detective.I love Tey's distinction of the "looker-on" in Grant that makes cool observations from a detached part of his consciousness. It is, perhaps, what Terry Pratchett likes to call his Third Thoughts. Tey's style is subtly artistic, unassuming but deft. Most of the time she is occupied with the events of the story, but sometimes something fanciful slips in, like this:At noon London made you a present of an entertainment, rich and varied and amusing. But at midnight she made you a present of herself; at midnight you could hear her breathe.For readers new to Tey, this isn't a bad place to start (though I prefer The Franchise Affair or Miss Pym Disposes), and with it Tey claims her place among the brighter talents of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Recommended.

[icewineanne · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Wow. I can't believe that this is the same writer who wrote Daughter of Time & The Franchise Affair. The plot is boring, the writing very uneven with too many dull descriptive passages. It was such a grind, I had to force myself to continue plodding on. After 50 pgs I had finally had enough & gave up. Too many wonderful books out there to waste your time on this one. My recommendation is don't bother.

[jkdavies · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

felt more disjointed and dated than other Tey's I have read, but intriguing to see how it all played out anyway

[cassandra2020 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey - Good

I seem to be in a bit of a rut at the moment in that I have now read eight books, this year, that are 'preserved in aspic' ie written decades ago but set in their present as opposed to written now about the past.

Josephine Tey's crime novels fall into the same era(s) as Agatha Christie. They share a little in that some words and phrases are now not-pc and certainly, in this book, the word she used to describe the suspect made me shudder. Other than that, they could not be more different. None of the cosy, little grey cells of Poirot or Miss Marple, Inspector Grant is a man of action. A Police Inspector that interviews witnesses, puts men undercover to get information and chases suspects across hill and dale.... or in this case across London and Glen.

Interesting little mystery with a few twists and turns along the way. Still of the cosy variety - no blood or forensic detail, but quite enjoyable.

[rvhatha · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I've been on a Josephine Tey kick lately (she's one of the Golden Age writers I came to late). And while I've enjoyed the others I've read, especially _Miss Pym Disposes_, I have to say that this one was difficult. I was put off by the casual racism in the use of the word "Dago" to describe the prime suspect, and even understanding that as part of the historical context didn't keep Inspector Grant's insistence on using it from bothering me a lot. I will note, though, that it's interesting how, once Grant has a name for his man, he stops calling him a Dago and actually empathizes with him. Still, by that point, the damage had been done.Someone's review of _Miss Pym_ mentioned the reliance on factors like phrenology and breeding (i.e., eugenics) to solve the case...and with that interesting observation in mind, I couldn't help but see the same kind of plot playing out here. _The Man in the Queue_ is rescued, however, by the twist that keeps it from falling in line with that kind of "logic."Despite all that, though, this is another clever, witty mystery by Tey, with some interesting characterizations and some gorgeous descriptions, such as this one:"He lingered in the door to watch the flat purple outline of the islands to the west. The stillness was full of the clear, faraway sounds of evening. The air smelt of peat smoke and the sea. The first lights of the village shone daffodil-clear here and there. The sea grew lavender, and the sands became a pale shimmer in the dusk."

[hanneri_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Tey's first Alan Grant detective story is a complex and entirely reasoned foray, with quite a literary flair, into the blatantly guilty who is actually innocent. Grant chases him through the wilds of Scotland and takes us along for the adventure.

[antiquary_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A man in the queue to buy a ticket for a popular London show dies with a knife in his back . Inspector Grant investigates --a difficult case as the man is unidentified.

[jjmcgaffey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is Tey's first detective story, and it's excellent. There are a couple odd things - what appear to me to be errors in British society, which seems very odd - isn't Tey British? Grant thinks casually (not happily, but casually) of confronting a criminal gun-to-gun. Are the CID normally armed? It's rather a major point in a lot of the mysteries I read that American police are armed and British are not. Similarly, Grant's housekeeper bemoans the Scots pronunciation of 'scone' as 'skon', which I think is the way it's pronounced in England too. Oh, and a woman is described as being 'Scotch' rather than Scots - all the kind of errors Americans tend to make about Britain (I've made them and had them corrected, and seen them being corrected in others, many times). Those aside, an interesting story - I had read it before and had some clue as to the outcome, though I had completely forgotten who the murderer actually was. Ratcliff was a complex blind alley - well, so was most of the evidence and suspicion in the whole case. Solved by an unsolicited confession - sheesh! Though Grant did know something was wrong with it, though he was completely stopped on what - in fact, that chapter is probably the most eloquent expression of total frustration I have ever read. Overall. a good story - definitely not one of my favorites, but worth reading and rereading.

[jonrob_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Tey's first published detectiive story (it was originally attributed to her pseudonym "Gordon Daviot" under which she had written the hit play "Richard of Bordeaux") and as usual it has some memorable characters, including the policeman Alan Grant himself, the suspect whom he pursues to a remote Scottish island, the actress Ray Marcable and the nurse "Dandie" Dinmont. There is some non-PC language used but hopefully that won't put too many people off this one.

[amelish · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It's like, you know. Okay.

[sly_wit · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Stasia, knowing I like Agatha Christie, gave me a bunch of Josephine Tey's mysteries. They are not quite the same style, but have that great England-in-the-1930s vibe.

[wyvernfriend · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There are some interesting subtexts in this story of love, obsession and murder. A man in a queue for the final performance of a particular actress in this run of her play before she goes to the US falls over dead and no-one remembers him being murdered. Inspector Alan Grant has to uncover the clues and follow a few red herrings before discovering the truth. It's full of details that to today's sensibilities are not too correct but it's an interesting look into the life and times and methods. It hasn't aged quite as well as some of her contemporaries and as other commentors have said the ending is a bit of a let-down, but in some ways quite realistic.

[tgpistole · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's hard to believe Tey died 60 years ago. Yes, some of the book is dated (It was first published in 1929!) but that doesn't really detract from the enjoyment. A good read.

[musicmom41 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was the first Alan Grant mystery (Elizabeth MacKintosh's first book, 1929) which she originally published under her other pseudonym, Gordon Daviot. The first novel under the Josephine Tey pseudonym was A Shilling for Candles (1936), also an Alan Grant novel. The other Alan Gran novels were To Love and Be Wise 1950, The Daughter of Time (1951), and The Singing Sands (1952). Also as Josephine Tey she wrote Miss Pym Disposes (1947), The Franchise Affair (1949), and Brat Farrar (1949). She died in London on February 13, 1952. Tey was a master at writing mysteries that contained ingenious puzzles but also equally interesting characters. She was more like Dorothy Sayers than Agatha Christie in that her books were novels that contained mysteries. My favorite Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None, also falls into this category. It is curious that Alan Grant, like Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn, did not need his salary as a policeman to earn his living as he had a considerable inheritance that would have sufficed for his needs. They both seem to be "gentlemen detectives", but unlike Dorothy Sayer's Lord Peter they were employed by the police.This first mystery has an ingenious puzzle involving a death by stabbing that happens in the line of people clamoring to get tickets for the final performance of a famous actress who is leaving to go to America the next day. The characters are interesting the clues are very well hidden. Even in this first effort you can see why Tey was considered one of the queens of the Golden Age of detective fiction.

[emanate28 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the first time I'd heard of Josephine Tey or read one of her books. It was a rather odd mystery, as Inspector Grant spends the entire time zeroing in on a particular suspect and feeling like something was not quite right...and then the twist comes at the end and the truth is revealed but no thanks to his abilities as a police inspector.For a huge Agatha Christie fan, this felt tame as a mystery, but I found the characters intriguing and drawn subtly enough to keep my interest.I see that some of Ms. Tey's other works have gotten higher ratings here, so maybe I will try one of them some time.

[figgles_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An enjoyable read though not the best Inspector Grant novel. The inspector investigates the death of a man, stabbed in the back in a London theatre queue. Some passages in Scotland remind me of John Buchan, but the ending is a bit of a cheat - from memory both Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers mention the problem of the watertight crime in their fiction... Also some of the language is dated and racist. Still if you are a fan of Tey and Grant then it's worth a look - but beginners should start with "Daughter of Time" or "The Franchise Affair".

[amy_marie26 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I've nothing really to say about this except to describe the entire plot which I do not feel like doing and which I will probably forget in about a week anyway. A man is murdered in a queue, but no one knows who he is which makes it hard to determine why he was murdered. Red herrings abound and the resolution is completely whackadoodle but it was pretty entertaining. Apparently, I had the cleaned up version that removed outright slurs but still maintained its racist and classist charm (ex. stabbing is so un-English! Guess we should look for a hot-blooded, swarthy Latin! Or a poor person).

[vesper1931 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While queuing to see a show in London, a man is found to have been stabbed. It is for Inspector Alan Grant to investigate..
This is the first book by Josephine Tey, and my first reading of one of her stories which took a few chapters to get passed some of the over-written passages. These did start to disappear as the story progressed. Original written in 1929 I look forward to reading the next Grant story.

[raizel_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Originally published in 1929 under the pen name Gordon Daviot. What I realized after this rereading is that the concept of the Rodeph---Hebrew for "pursuer"---is central to the story: Inspector Grant spends a lot of time hunting down the obvious culprit and, more importantly, the murder victim is a Rodeph, whom the killer believes can only be stopped by killing him.The last three paragraphs, part of brief first-person conversation at the end of the story, added an important moral question to what was otherwise just an enjoyable, difficult-but-maybe-not-impossble-to-guess murder mystery:"Well," I said to him, "it has been a queer case, but the queerest thing about it is that there isn't a villain in it.""Isn't there!" Grant said, with that twist to his mouth.Well, is there?

[fliss88_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A murder committed in the crush of a queue. There's no obvious suspect, there are no clues. There's a murder weapon, it's stuck in the back of the victim. Who did it and why? Kept me guessing and I didn't pick the truth!

[bcrowl399 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There was a lot of suspense in the story, but it started to wear me out toward the end. Not sure if I want to read more of Tey's work.

[atimco-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Man in the Queue, first published in 1929, is Josephine Tey's first novel. It introduces Inspector Alan Grant, a dapper little Scotland Yard man with a keen eye for detail. When a man is murdered while waiting in the queue for a popular play, Grant is given the case. But how often is a man murdered — with a dagger, no less — in such a public place? There are a hundred suspects, and none at all. (Please note that there are mild spoilers in this review.)It's interesting that Tey should start her mysteries with her detective's failure to unravel the case. Grant does have an uneasy feeling about the man he tracks down for the murder, but besides that he really doesn't figure out the tangle. I think I like that, actually. Grant can make mistakes like any other person; he isn't the omniscient Holmes or Poirot who always knows the answer and dazzles us all senseless at the end. Tey muses on the fact that an innocent man would have been hanged but for "a woman's fair dealing." It is astonishing (and sobering) how convincing a case can be built from circumstantial evidence. Sometimes justice does miscarry.And that's what I've come to appreciate about Tey, who is certainly not as flashy as some of her fellow murder-mystery authors. Her stories feel like they really could happen. The detective makes real mistakes. The events are mundane and the murders generally unspectacular. But through these stories the characters become more memorable because they don't have to compete with the staging of the murder or live up to the stereotype of the superhuman detective.I love Tey's distinction of the "looker-on" in Grant that makes cool observations from a detached part of his consciousness. It is, perhaps, what Terry Pratchett likes to call his Third Thoughts. Tey's style is subtly artistic, unassuming but deft. Most of the time she is occupied with the events of the story, but sometimes something fanciful slips in, like this:At noon London made you a present of an entertainment, rich and varied and amusing. But at midnight she made you a present of herself; at midnight you could hear her breathe.For readers new to Tey, this isn't a bad place to start (though I prefer The Franchise Affair or Miss Pym Disposes), and with it Tey claims her place among the brighter talents of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Recommended.

[brokentune · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

‘Yes,’ she said; ‘that’s all very well, but look at the long night there’ll be. You never know the minute you’ll waken up hungry and be glad of the sandwiches even if it’s only to pass the time. They’re chicken, and you don’t know when you’ll have chicken again. It’s a terribly poor country, Scotland. Goodness only knows what you’ll get to eat!’Grant said that Scotland nowadays was very like the rest of Britain, only more beautiful.‘I don’t know anything about beauty,’ said Mrs Field, putting the sandwiches resolutely away in the rug-strap, ‘but I do know that a cousin of mine was in service there once – she went for the season with her people from London – and there wasn’t a house to be seen in the whole countryside but their own, and not a tree. And the natives had never heard of teacakes, and called scones “skons.”’‘How barbaric!’ said Grant, folding his most ancient tweed lovingly away in his case. The Man in the Queue is Tey's first book in the Inspector Grant series and deals with the mystery of a murder that occurs in plain sight but has no witnesses. This is not a spoiler as such as this literally happens within the first few pages. From there on we are introduced to Scotland Yard's Alan Grant, who is the Inspector investigating the case. Grant is a great character - he is funny, contemplative, but also does not shirk away from action. Some of the funniest parts of this story are build around the dialogue that Grant has with various other characters. And the best part is that they are meant to be funny. They are not just funny because they are quaint - there is some freshness to the dialogues.‘No time is wasted that earns such a wealth of gratitude as I feel for you,’ said Struwwelpeter. ‘I was in the depths when you arrived. I can never paint on Monday mornings. There should be no such thing. Monday mornings should be burnt out of the calendar with prussic acid. And you have made a Monday morning actually memorable! It is a great achievement. Sometime when you are not too busy breaking the law come back and I’ll paint your portrait. You have a charming head.’Of course, this should not come as a surprise when we know that before writing this book, Tey had already become a successful writer of plays and other stories under her pseudonym of Gordon Daviot. But it was a bit of a surprise to me, because quite a few reviews of The Man in the Queue did mention that the book had not aged well, a criticism which also seems to be linked with the use of the slur "Dago" throughout the book. I can of course understand that criticism. However, having read two of her other novels in this series also, I am beginning to wonder whether Tey's use of satire and irony may have been at play here, too. She uses the term "Dago" so abundantly to refer to main suspect that I began to wonder whether this over-use was intended to show the assumptions that Tey may have suspected her readers at the time to make as being blinded by stereotype rather than the analysis of the facts. There are some other parts in the book that lead me to believe that Tey may actually have tried to dispel some of the stereotypes found in the pulp fiction of her time. (And of course, in her most famous work A Daughter of Time, we get to question again whether appearances really tell us anything about facts at all!) Notably, Tey includes a dinner conversation in which she shows up a character who is a racist as an ignorant bigot:"His race was a fetish with him, and he compared it at length with most of the other nations in Western Europe, to their extreme detriment. It was only towards the end of tea that Grant found, to his intense amusement, that Mr Logan had never been out of Scotland in his life. The despised Lowlanders he had met only during his training for the ministry some thirty years ago, and the other nations he had never known at all."I have no biographical proof for this notion of mine. Tey was a private person. Even Josephine Tey is a nom de plume. However, I am looking forward to finding out more about Tey and see whether I can put some meat on this bone in the course of reading more by and about her. As for The Man in the Queue, it is not a great mystery - which is another reason I am inclined to believe that Tey's interest lay more with the creation of ambiguity than with a plot that would thrill lovers of puzzles. There are no clues that would lead the reader to the ultimate solution of the murder. In fact, the ending and solution comes quite out of the blue. In that sense, I would even say that it might work as a mockery of the detective genre. (Maybe that is the reason why it took another 7 years for the next book in the series? I have no answers.) Still I found it very much worth reading."Well, he would find out from the Yard if there was anything new, and if not, he would fortify himself with tea. He needed it. And the slow sipping of tea conduced to thought. Not the painful tabulations of Barker, that prince of superintendents, but the speculative revolving of things which he, Grant, found more productive. He numbered among his acquaintances a poet and essayist, who sipped tea in a steady monotonous rhythm, the while he brought to birth his masterpieces. His digestive system was in a shocking condition, but he had a very fine reputation among the more precious of the modern littérateurs."