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Oct. 21st, 2019 10:04 pmI've gotten into the habit of carrying an emergency thrift-store paperback with me every time I go on a long trip, in part because I've had e-readers unexpectedly die or run out of charge with me too many times and in part because I really do need to get through my backlog of thrift-store paperbacks.
On my last trip it was Josephine Tey's A Shilling For Candles, because I vaguely remembered various people telling me it was the Tey book I should read after I posted about liking Brat Farrar. In going back and reading comments, it turns out this is not at all correct. The book everyone told me I should read is To Love And Be Wise. Someday I will be wise enough to follow this advice, and then, presumably, to love the book.
But A Shilling For Candles is also not bad! It didn't make as much of an impression on me as Brat Farrar -- it's a much more mystery-shaped mystery novel, starting with an actress washing up dead on the beach, after which Tey's favorite detective traverses a round of the usual suspects -- but there were several things about it that I found pleasing:
- often when a book begins with a Beautiful Young Woman Found Dead it goes on to reveal all kinds of unpleasant secrets about her and what she was Really Like; murder victim Christine Clay retains her interest and her dignity throughout the whole process
- Inspector Grant is surprisingly and ruefully aware of his own internalized classism and the different ways he finds himself treating the different kind of suspects, a thing I did not expect from Josephine Tey after Brat Farrar
- Inspector Grant is also extremely fallible for a Golden Age detective! many of the snap impressions he gets off people turn out to be wrong! a major subplot revolves around the potentially disastrous consequences of his erroneous conclusions! this often happens in 1930s mysteries but not often in the kind of mysteries in which the respected detective is the protagonist and I appreciated it very much
- ( spoiler )
On my last trip it was Josephine Tey's A Shilling For Candles, because I vaguely remembered various people telling me it was the Tey book I should read after I posted about liking Brat Farrar. In going back and reading comments, it turns out this is not at all correct. The book everyone told me I should read is To Love And Be Wise. Someday I will be wise enough to follow this advice, and then, presumably, to love the book.
But A Shilling For Candles is also not bad! It didn't make as much of an impression on me as Brat Farrar -- it's a much more mystery-shaped mystery novel, starting with an actress washing up dead on the beach, after which Tey's favorite detective traverses a round of the usual suspects -- but there were several things about it that I found pleasing:
- often when a book begins with a Beautiful Young Woman Found Dead it goes on to reveal all kinds of unpleasant secrets about her and what she was Really Like; murder victim Christine Clay retains her interest and her dignity throughout the whole process
- Inspector Grant is surprisingly and ruefully aware of his own internalized classism and the different ways he finds himself treating the different kind of suspects, a thing I did not expect from Josephine Tey after Brat Farrar
- Inspector Grant is also extremely fallible for a Golden Age detective! many of the snap impressions he gets off people turn out to be wrong! a major subplot revolves around the potentially disastrous consequences of his erroneous conclusions! this often happens in 1930s mysteries but not often in the kind of mysteries in which the respected detective is the protagonist and I appreciated it very much
- ( spoiler )
