Faber & Faber first edition - 2022
This is the tenth book in Nicola Upson's detective series featuring the real-life crime writer Josephine Tey. One assumes more are to come, as Tey did not die until 1952 and this volume is set in 1939, on the outbreak of the Second World War.
The story is quite well told, merging two frightening scenarios - the disappearance of a small child and the arrival of another World War. There is minimal 'detection' as such but some interesting village characters and the inter-action between them. Tey's Inspector Grant again figures (as Archie Penrose) and Upson does well to reiterate the very 'ordinariness' of the original - here is no Lord Peter Wimsey, Hercule Poirot or Albert Campion. It was a clever idea to bring another famous real-life author of detective stories into the plot - Margery Allingham. Upson had done her homework on the latter, as I found out when I looked up the Margery Allingham Society webpage. The meeting at Allingham's house, D'Arcy House, in the nearby village of Tolleshunt D'Arcy, where the missing girl is fortuitously 'found', is well written. The involvement of the famous Wilkin (Tiptree Jam) firm is also good for trade!
There is a mild feeling of the pace being 'rushed' towards the end. However, the two families closely connected with the tragedies (two other little girls are missing, then found dead) - the Herrons and the Chilvers - are realistically described and the unmasked villain rightly meets his deserts on the end of a rope. Even the final 'suicide' of one of the dead girls' mother (she deliberately goes out into the open street as a major air raid starts) is understandable.
The least successful (appealing?) aspect of the book is Upson's determination to insert a lesbian affair between the fictional Tey and her chum Marta. It does not progress or enhance the tale and, if excised completely, would not have been missed. Jennifer Morag Henderson, in her excellent biography of the real Tey (2015) gives short shrift to the idea of Tey being sexually attracted to other women. True, the real-life Marta, a promiscuous lesbian named Marda Vanne, wrote a 'diary' based on her feelings for Tey. As Henderson writes, Tey was tolerant of her friends' (Gwen Frangçon-Davies was another lesbian actress and friendly with Tey) sexuality but, as her own romantic history shows, she herself was attracted to men. She dealt with Marda's declaration of love by treating it as fictional; she also tried, in a letter, to explain to Marda that she was not only not interested in a relationship, but had not even contemplated the existence of such a relationship. This is very different from the image Upson is pushing, more so as her series goes on. The fact that Upson herself is in a same-sex relationship suggests this departure from the facts is more like a mission statement.
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