A shilling for candles

It has been quite some time since I read anything by Josephine Tey (real name: Elizabeth MacKintosh), so I thought I would give her a try again. I liked "The Franchise Affair" and "Brat Farrar," but decided to try something new this time.

"A Shilling for Candles" features Tey's series sleuth, Inspector Alan Grant. It starts with the discovery of the body of a young woman, apparently drowned, near a small coastal English town. Is it suicide, accident, or murder? Of course, it's murder - obviously! The first suspect, a young man staying at the victim's home, arrives on the scene soon after her body is found, and the other suspects soon pile up.

The young woman is identified as Christine Clay, an Anglo-American actress of both musicals and dramatic films. She was a movie star and worked hard to get where she was. Much of the charm of the book is learning Christine's background and discovering her relationships with the various suspects. It is also refreshing to have a victim who is not a monster that everyone hates. Christine is actually a good, decent person capable of great generosity. Among the bequests in her will is a sum of money to a bellhop in Chicago “to buy that gas station with.” Of course, there are reasons to want her dead and they don't all involve her money.

A nice aspect of the book is the fact that Grant is not the only detective. He is assisted - whether he wants it or not - by young Erica Burgoyne, the 17-year-old daughter of the local Chief Constable and a talented amateur detective in her own right. Then there's Christine's friend, the songwriter, Jason Harmer, who tracks her down to her secret location through some amazing - one might even say obsessive - detective work. (He actually comes off as a bit of a stalker.)

There are a couple things that annoy me - and apparently other readers, too, judging from reviews I've read. First, let me quote Robert Barnard, who wrote the forward:

"In 'A Shilling for Candles,' for example, two of the three plot strands are unraveled with information that is either not given readers at the time the detective gets it, or only revealed just before the unmasking of the criminal. She was, in other words, not interested enough in that kind of game, and preferred to play other, more varied sports."

It's irritating to see Inspector Grant read something we are not allowed to see, and then run off to catch the killer, whose identity we STILL don't know.

Second, there is the the killer's motive, which is the most bizarre thing I've seen yet in a mystery novel. I've watched several giallo (Italian slasher films) and they are known for their strange, often nonsensical motives that frequently seemed tacked on. That's the same feeling I get here. I really expected better of Tey. Like I said, this is the third book of hers that I've read, and the others were nothing like this.

Well, overall, this is a good mystery, as long as you can suspend some disbelief at the end, and don't mind that the author is not playing fair with you. However, if you are going to read Tey for the first time, I recommend either "The Franchise Affair" (inspired by an actual 18th century British case) or "Brat Farrar." They're considered among her best work.

This is only Tey's second novel. She was primarily a playwright. Her play, "Richard of Bordeaux", ran for a year with John Gielgud in the title role.