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The Man in the Queue

Name: The Man in the Queue
Rating: 3 (1 reviews)
ISBN: 9781782279600

By Josephine Tey

Publisher Description

A long line had formed for the standing-room-only section of the Woffington Theatre. Didn't You Know?, London's favorite musical comedy for the past two years, was finishing its run. The line began to move, but one man, his head sunk down upon his chest, slowly sank to his knees and keeled over. A spectator moved to help, but recoiled in horror: The man in the queue had a small silver dagger neatly plunged into his back. So begins Inspector Alan Grant's first case, and it's up to the dapper detective to discover how a murder was committed among so many witnesses . . .

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The Man in the Queue Reviews

3.0

NormallyJames

Created about 1 year ago

“This is my second foray into Josephine Tey's work, following The Daughter of Time, which I read in February. I was completely enamoured by Tey's writing style and my first encounter with her character of Inspector Alan Grant, and vowed to read more of her work as a result. The Man in the Queue, written in 1929, was one of Tey's first novels and is the beginning of her Inspector Grant series of six novels. Before reading—in fact, in early February, when I finished The Daughter of Time—I found the premise of this novel to be rather interesting and assumed it would be the next novel of Tey's I found myself reading. An unknown man is stabbed to death by an unknown assailant whilst standing in the queue for the final performance of the hottest musical comedy in London. I found this novel to have quite a slow start. Those first 6 chapters, I found myself struggling to pick up my copy each night, but yesterday, finding myself clambering out of that thick mud of a first act, I flew through the rest of this novel and remembered why I was so enthralled with The Daughter of Time a few months ago. The second act is truly marvellous with Grant up in the Scottish Highlands chasing leads, suspects and fish. It was odd, but it felt like a breath of fresh air to have left the streets of London and to be surrounded by descriptions of moorland and open waters, boats! If I could, I would probably give this novel three and a half stars and dedicate one and a half stars to just that second act. Not to divulge spoilers for this novel, but I did find the so-called reveal that "shocks even the canny detective himself" pretty poor, which is a shame. I think the justification for the mystery is that it's subtly hinted that something is afoot early in the novel; however, that line of questioning and "hint" is very quickly dropped and never mentioned again to my memory until the plot demands it. That being said, the reveal and conclusion happen in the blink of an eye, so it's not like you have long to dwell upon it before the novel ends and you're writing your own review like I am now. All in all, I did enjoy reading this even for its faults, and I will read more of Josephine Tey in the future as not only have her further Inspector Grant novels intrigued me, but that of her other works, such as Miss Pym Disposes and Brat Farrar.”