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Read Josephine Tey's The Man In the Queue yesterday, and I'm still trying to decide if it's a mystery with a less-than-satisfying ending, or a deconstruction of mystery novels. (spoilers after cut)
I'd only ever encountered CID Grant in Daughter of Time, where he's investigating Richard III from his hospital bed. Here, he's doing more usual police work, investigating the murder of a man stabbed with a stiletto while waiting in the line outside a beloved musical during the last week of its two-year run in London.
I almost gave up on the book at the start when Grant immediately thinks "Stilletto=foreigner and then uses the slur "dago" about twenty times in the next page. I decided to keep on, thinking (a) if it's this early on, it must be a red herring, and (b) she seems like she might be deliberately laying it on thick - she's come up with a murder premise that requires a stiletto (actually a letter-opener, as it later turns out) and she's decided to lampshade the stereotype.
Grant identifies a suspect and spends the rest of the book chasing him, eventually, through a combination of ingenuity, persistence and considerable luck, running him down in Scotland. The whole time, he mentally calls the man "the Dago" despite his eventual identification as having a very English-sounding name (one of his grandmothers was Italian.) When finally caught, he says "I know you're not going to believe me but I didn't do it," and proceeds to tell his version of events, which also fits the facts we've been shown. Grant, despite himself, does half-believe the man is innocent, but is unable to prove it. About five pages before the ending, the real killer comes forward, saying "I would've got away with it but I can't let you convict an innocent man," and recounts a version that fits all the facts, including the loose ends involving the star of the show the victim was waiting to see when he was stabbed.
Throughout, the narrative voice has been... Complicated. most of the time it seems to be omniscient third-person, showing Grant's POV most of the time, but taking in some scenes where he wasn't present, such as the suspect's landlady masterminding his escape - at that point, of course, she appears to be a villain, and we are told her boarders nicknamed her Lady MacBeth. In some passages, otoh, the narrator is a friend of Grant's, writing this up after having heard the story from him. This is how it is on the final page of the book, when, having learned the victim was stalking the show's star and planning a murder/suicide, and that the real killer had stabbed him to prevent this, the narrator exclaims that the most amazing thing about this story is that there's no villain in it. "Wasn't there?" asks Grant. I don't think he means himself, but rather the musical-comedy star, whom he has decided is cold and narcissistic beneath her sweet and funny exterior, and who was the motivation for the killing even if she didn't know anything about it. Grant, however, is the man who spent this whole book chasing the wrong suspect, so why should we trust his judgement of anyone's personality at this point?
There's enough mirroring (the star had played Lady MacBeth as a teenager in a school play using that letter-opener as the dagger) that I can't believe this wasn't all deliberately constructed to fool the reader into misjudging the characters; I'm just unsure if it's meant to extend to the protagonist as well. We hear throughout how clever he is, but he himself in reviewing matters at the end acknowledges this case was solved by a long string of lucky breaks, culminating in the totally unsuspected real murderer coming forward with a full confession and explanation. Still thinking this one through; may need to read more Tey to see if she always does this sort of thing.
I'd only ever encountered CID Grant in Daughter of Time, where he's investigating Richard III from his hospital bed. Here, he's doing more usual police work, investigating the murder of a man stabbed with a stiletto while waiting in the line outside a beloved musical during the last week of its two-year run in London.
I almost gave up on the book at the start when Grant immediately thinks "Stilletto=foreigner and then uses the slur "dago" about twenty times in the next page. I decided to keep on, thinking (a) if it's this early on, it must be a red herring, and (b) she seems like she might be deliberately laying it on thick - she's come up with a murder premise that requires a stiletto (actually a letter-opener, as it later turns out) and she's decided to lampshade the stereotype.
Grant identifies a suspect and spends the rest of the book chasing him, eventually, through a combination of ingenuity, persistence and considerable luck, running him down in Scotland. The whole time, he mentally calls the man "the Dago" despite his eventual identification as having a very English-sounding name (one of his grandmothers was Italian.) When finally caught, he says "I know you're not going to believe me but I didn't do it," and proceeds to tell his version of events, which also fits the facts we've been shown. Grant, despite himself, does half-believe the man is innocent, but is unable to prove it. About five pages before the ending, the real killer comes forward, saying "I would've got away with it but I can't let you convict an innocent man," and recounts a version that fits all the facts, including the loose ends involving the star of the show the victim was waiting to see when he was stabbed.
Throughout, the narrative voice has been... Complicated. most of the time it seems to be omniscient third-person, showing Grant's POV most of the time, but taking in some scenes where he wasn't present, such as the suspect's landlady masterminding his escape - at that point, of course, she appears to be a villain, and we are told her boarders nicknamed her Lady MacBeth. In some passages, otoh, the narrator is a friend of Grant's, writing this up after having heard the story from him. This is how it is on the final page of the book, when, having learned the victim was stalking the show's star and planning a murder/suicide, and that the real killer had stabbed him to prevent this, the narrator exclaims that the most amazing thing about this story is that there's no villain in it. "Wasn't there?" asks Grant. I don't think he means himself, but rather the musical-comedy star, whom he has decided is cold and narcissistic beneath her sweet and funny exterior, and who was the motivation for the killing even if she didn't know anything about it. Grant, however, is the man who spent this whole book chasing the wrong suspect, so why should we trust his judgement of anyone's personality at this point?
There's enough mirroring (the star had played Lady MacBeth as a teenager in a school play using that letter-opener as the dagger) that I can't believe this wasn't all deliberately constructed to fool the reader into misjudging the characters; I'm just unsure if it's meant to extend to the protagonist as well. We hear throughout how clever he is, but he himself in reviewing matters at the end acknowledges this case was solved by a long string of lucky breaks, culminating in the totally unsuspected real murderer coming forward with a full confession and explanation. Still thinking this one through; may need to read more Tey to see if she always does this sort of thing.
