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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadence" data-source="post: 8658093" data-attributes="member: 6701124">Finished reading all 8 of Josephine Tey's mysteries. Tey is one of Elizabeth MacKintosh's pseudonyms.  She used Gordon Daviot for her plays, the non-mystery novels, short stories and poetry (and originally for the first mystery now commonly listed under Tey). Tey is sometimes listed as one of the four Queens of Crime with Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Margery Allingham - in place of Ngaio Marsh, and some of her books make some "greatest ever lists". (Daughter of Time was #1 on the 1990 list by the British Crime Writers' Association for top crime novel of all time, and The Franchise Affair was number 11.  The Franchise Affair also made the top 101 list for Parade Magazine.  Those two (#4 and #81) and Brat Farrar (#90) show up on the top 100 by the Mystery Writers of America).I don't know if I've ever read someone who is this much of a wordsmith.  I can't tell you if they are the best plots (although they seemed fine) or best characters (although I found myself liking  many of them), but the words themselves pulled me along and made me want to read.The first two Inspector Grant novels (The Man in the Queue and A Shilling for Candles) would have been super, but there were a couple parts in each where it felt like there was a scene jump, or something odd, or something I missed.  They were still good reads, and those problems didn't happen for the later six.The next three didn't really have Inspector Grant in them - Miss Pym Disposes and Brat Farrar (not at all) and The Franchise Affair (a cameo or two).  The final three all featured him at the center To Love and Be Wise, The Daughter of Time, and The Singing Sands.Miss Pym Disposes was a spectacular book set in an English girl's college.   My big reason for not listing the  rest on the same level is that the endings didn't quite live up to the previous parts of the books (they were fine, but I really, really liked what came before).   I guess from those others that The Franchise Affair is my second favorite.  I also wonder if the Daughter of Time reads better if one has some passing knowledge of the history English monarchy (it's the only one that might have drug for me at a point or two).  The Daughter of Time and the Singing Sand stand out for not having the usual mystery set-up.Edit: As an aside, I would say don't read the reviews, summaries, or cover blurbs of any of them before jumping in.  Some of them definitely would have changed the natural feel of the books to me for a first read.Now on to Dasheill Hammet.</blockquote>

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