In
her newly commissioned introduction, the critically acclaimed crime writer Val McDermid explores
Tey’s enduring popularity among readers and novelists alike. She also comments on her unconventional
characterisation, including Grant’s ambiguous character and his susceptibility
to the forces of ‘Unreason’ – both uncommon traits in a golden-age detective. For McDermid, Tey was the bridge between that
era and contemporary crime fiction, opening up the genre for writers such as
Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell. Like
the earlier Brat
Farrar and The Franchise
Affair, Tey’s 1952 novel is a classic mystery, but one that is
unusually sensitive to the frailties and oddities of human psychology.
Diagnosed
with ‘overwork’ and in the grip of debilitating claustrophobia, Inspector Alan
Grant takes leave from Scotland Yard and heads for the peaceful home of his
cousin Laura, who lives with her family in the Scottish Highlands. As the London mail draws into Inverness, he
sees the surly sleeping-car attendant trying to rouse an unresponsive young man. He is compelled; firstly, to point out that
the passenger is dead, and secondly to pick up the newspaper that has slipped
onto the compartment floor. On it the
deceased, who appears to have drunk himself into oblivion, has scrawled an
elusive poem about a paradise guarded by ‘singing sand’. Grant is soon fascinated by the hopes and
dreams of the dead man with ‘tumbled black hair and … reckless eyebrows’. And though he has planned to do nothing in
Scotland but fish, he cannot help but act on the growing suspicion that a far
more sinister story is waiting to be uncovered …
Illustrations © Mark Smith 2014 |
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