Miss Lucy Pym intended to teach French to schoolgirls all her life but a timely legacy & an interest in psychology led her to write a bestseller & become a minor celebrity. I bought these lovely US paperback editions a few years ago intending to reread them all but it wasn't until Saturday afternoon that I sat down to begin reading Miss Pym Disposes & didn't move until I'd finished it. As well as the Inspector Grant novels she also wrote several books, Brat Farrer, The Franchise Affair & Miss Pym Disposes, that aren't strictly detective novels but all have a mystery or crime at their heart. As well as brilliantly conveying a sense of time and place, Smith cleverly uses unusual angles, ominous shadows and body language to bring a hint of menace to these apparently innocent scenes.I love Josephine Tey's books & it's been ages since I reread one (apart from The Daughter of Time which I reread at least once a year although that has more to do with my Richard III obsession). Mark Smith, who provided the illustrations for The Singing Sands, A Shilling for Candles and our new edition of The Daughter of Time, returns to bring the world of Leys to life. ‘The most interesting of the great female writers of the Golden Age’
This only adds to the charm of the mystery – the reader is on an equal footing with Miss Pym, and is invited to solve the crime alongside her. Unusually for a Golden Age crime novel, rather than a detective or even an enthusiastic amateur sleuth, it features a simple bystander thrown into the drama. It was whilst teaching in such a college that Tey herself was struck by a piece of falling gymnasium equipment, providing the seed that would inspire this tale of twists and obsessive friendship. The girls and the teachers are all distinctive, even familiar, characters, and Tey writes about them with warmth and a keen observational eye. Tey herself attended a physical education college as a girl and even taught in them as an adult, and this intimacy with the subject shines throughout the book.
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