Tey Time!

One of the authors I've read tons of in the past couple of months is Josephine Tey, a Scottish mystery writer who died in 1952. Tey's primary character is Scotland Yard's Inspector Alan Grant, a handsome poetry-loving detective with an interest in history and a predilection for gut feelings that drive his superior a bit mad. Although Tey is sometimes a little too rooted in her time (mostly to do with social morays), the mysteries are unconventional and a great deal of fun. Each novel is only around 200 pages, and the writing has a very lyrical quality as well as a sardonic wit. (If you know nothing else of me by now, you should know that I love me some sardonic wit.)

I pulled some "speak to Mel" quotes from the novels I returned to the library this week to share here. Enjoy!


To Love and Be Wise, Chapter 6: Lavinia on trying to define the appeal of the disconcerting Leslie Searle: "He has a nice gentle voice and an engaging drawl; but so have half the inhabitants of Texas and a large part of the population of Ireland."
(The Irish-Texan voices in my own household vary in their gentleness, but all are engaging.)

To Love and Be Wise, Chapter 14: Grant on a quiet morning in the countryside: "People who get up at the crack of dawn during the week, and had no animals to get them up on Sunday, must be glad to sleep late. He had grumbled often when his police duties had broken into his private life... but to spend one's life in bondage to the predilections of animals must be a sad waste of a free man's time."
(No, the cat never wakes me up at seven every Sunday. At least, not if the dogs get me up first.)

The Daughter of Time, Chapter 6: Marta on acquiring books: "No T. More in any of the bookshops, so tried Public Library. Can't think why one never thinks of Public Libraries. Probably because books expected to be soupy. Think this looks quite clean and unsoupy. You get fourteen days. Sounds like a sentence rather than a loan."
(Hi, Harris County Public Library and Houston Public Library - thanks for all of the unsoupy books!)

Some Series Stuff

I've been reading & listening to plenty of series, again, some more.

So much of this summer fun has been discovering Dorothy L. Sayers, and her charming Lord Peter Wimsey. I've  been reading in order of publication (excepting the stories), so I've just now finished a popular favorite, Murder Must Advertise. Oh, if I didn't love him already, Lord Peter undercover always just wins my heart in the most through fashion. Could he be more tongue-in-cheek? Could he be cleverer? More insightful? A better cat playing with mice? And although I missed Bunter, as I always do when he plays a small or absent part in the plots, I enjoyed the large doses of domesticity at the home of Lady Mary and Chief Inspector Charles Parker, wedded in bliss. All this, plus drug smuggling and deadlines!

Not enough English detective fiction for you? Or for me, as the case may be? Well, not to worry, I've also continued with Josephine Tey's Inspector Grant - so far, I've read through The Franchise Affair. Although Grant appears only tangentially in this one, I very much enjoyed Tey's twists and turns and the characters she created for this mystery. I like Grant and wish him well (you know, in that "I'm not crazy for wishing a fictional character by a dead author well" sort of way), but I became very quickly caught up in the life of sedate country lawyer Robert Blair. His interactions with home-keeping aunt, flashy business-partner cousin, and mysterious clients are all finely drawn and deeply felt, for all of his quiet solidity. I felt outrage, and yearning, and helplessness, and determination, and joy. So good.

And to jump ship entirely from the detectives, I hopped on board Bloody Jack, by L.A. Meyer. Young orphan Mary, seeking a life better than that she has with a London street gang, dresses in trousers and talks her way on board the HMS Dolphin as a ship's boy named Jack. There, predictably, she encounters a few difficulties hiding her gender, but the Dolphin is mostly a safe haven, with regular meals (never mind the weevils), music, friendship, and adventure. Through no fault of her own - or mostly no fault of her own - Jacky becomes a bit of an epicenter of trouble on board. She handles everything with excellent spirit, cringe-inducing naiveté, bravery, tenderness, and determination. I've also listened to the second book - Curse of the Blue Tattoo - and prefer the first. But Meyer's character and Katherine Kellgren's narration have me eagerly lining up the rest.

The WWW: Bringing Mel Friends with Book Recommendations for a Dozen Years

I love the internet. Every once in a while - or even fairly often, if you're both open and judicious - you can find some superb strangers who can become friends, out there in the vastness of cyberspace. Example: For upwards of a decade I've depended on my amazing Working Moms community of friends ( / co-cult members / axe-murderers, according to my mother-in-law, who owns no answering machine or DVD player, and certainly no computer.)  Another site where like-minded people put up with me these days is at the NPR pop culture blog, MonkeySee, which I've mentioned here repeatedly.

So one voice there belongs to a commenter whose recommendations were so to my taste that we eventually friended on facebook / followed each other on twitter / blah blah blah mindmeldcakes. I mean, anyone who loves Shannon Hale and British costume drama is bound to get along with me, really. (Go, quick, read Goose Girl! No, now. I'm serious.) And at one point, Margaret (who will someday have My Path Not Traveled Dream Job #2: children's librarian) posted a gorgeous list of new-to-me novels. I've just finished several of them, and have to share.

First up: Robin Mckinley's Beauty which, maybe this is obvious, is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Despite the fact that the dishes moving across the table on their own kept sending me to a Disney place, giving this book an entirely unwarranted upbeat soundtrack, I was enchanted by Mckinley's retelling. (Yes, I said "enchanted." Live with it.) Beauty's voice is smart and a little sardonic, and always true. Her deep love for her family propels her through so much of the action, giving her the strength to deal with the magically opening doors and the claws of The Beast. The class-distinction and hints of time-flexibility story lines add some unexpected depth and interest to the Happily Ever After story.  

Also in the fairy stories retold basket is Elizabeth Marie Pope's The Perilous Gard. Here, one of Queen Mary Tudor's maids, Kate, is banished to a mysterious castle where things are not quite as evolved from heathen / fairy-folk times as the 16th-century nobility might have assumed. It's an adventure with some love thrown in, full of music and mystery and the kind of hero who can't ever see herself as heroic, because all she does is what she thinks anyone would do in her place. In Kate's case, it's her clear mind and her self-possession that elevate her actions into the heroic realm. I wish that Pope had given her as strong a voice as Mckinley did Beauty, but I've got no other complaints about this extremely well plotted and paced tale.

Jumping forward a few centuries, I also read Josephine Tey's first novel, The Man in the Queue. Although I'm generally fond of the Scotland Yard mystery stuff, I'd never heard of Tey (or her a.k.a.s), but I quickly added more of her work to my library's hold list. Inspector Grant has an unidentified body, the murder weapon, and several people who were within inches of the man as he was killed, but very little else to go on as he attempts to solve the case. (Confession: about 2/3 of the way through, I told K - my 11 year old - that I was sure Grant was chasing the wrong guy. K had me write a list of everyone it could be, ranked by my level of suspicion, then picked his choice of murderer from the middle of the list. We were both wrong - because although the info was all there, I completely forgot about the relevant person until the confession, so the murderer wasn't listed. And then I had to kick myself.) I can get irritated with mysteries when the solution comes from absolutely nowhere, so although neither Grant nor I figured it out, I admire the way Tey set us up. And oh - her language, her style, her characterizations! Yes, please, more more more.

Sometimes I do things other than read, did you know? This month, I watched the BBC versions of North and South and the first four episodes (so far!) of Berkeley Square after Margaret mentioned them both. First of all, yum. I hadn't seen North and South (based on the Elizabeth Gaskell novel, not the Civil War / Patrick Swayze version) in a heck of a long time, and it is chock full of meaningful looks and unfulfilled longings and drawing room manners and class snobbery and all of that repressed goodness. Berkeley Square is new to me and has more of a Duchess of Duke Street feel about it. Which is also a good thing. Plenty of drama below stairs and tempers and secrets and unintended consequences that can result when faced with a raffish smile and a rebellious spirit.


Okay, there's my paean to Margaret. And thanks, internet, for ignoring the fact that we are separated by 1900 miles and 15 years and innumerable other things in favor of the fact that we both know how hot Colin Firth is as Darcy.