Man in the Queue

Tey, Josephine. Man in the Queue. New York: MacMillan. 1929. Print.

First Sentences:

It was between seven and eight o'clock on  a March evening and all over London the bars were being drawn from pit and gallery doors. Bang, thud, and clank. Grim sounds to preface an evening's amusement. But no last trump could have so galvanized the weary attendants on Thespis and Terpsichore standing in patient columns of four before the Terpsichore standing in patient columns of four before the gates of promise..


Description:

To me, there is nothing that beats a quiet police procedural murder mystery. I love the methodical, by-the-book process of tracking down a murderer using the only advantages a police force has: manpower and time.

For this her first mystery novel, author Josephine Tey begins simply with a large group of people standing in tightly-packed lines awaiting the opening of the cheap seats on the last night of a hit play. As the gates open and the line presses forward, one person, the titular Man in the Queue, slumps over and falls to the ground. Upon examination by others in the line, he is found to have a knife sticking out of his back and is, of course, dead. 

Alan Grant, London's chief inspector, has little to go on. The dead man has had all his labels torn from his clothes and nothing in his pockets ... except for a loaded revolver.

All Grant can do is try to locate the queue people standing near the victim, interview them, and hope they offer some means of identifying this dead man, and ideally help Grant find the killer. No easy task this, but Grant is the man for the job.

He is an unusual police figure in mystery literature. He is generally happy, well-dressed, sophisticated, and enjoys his work. So unlike the troubled, angry, brooding detectives often found in other criminal novels. 

And piece by piece, Grant gains small insights into the victim and the case, although he does follow some dead or misleading trails. The story involves romance, jealousy, secrets, and mansions. Tey even  provides Grant a chance go fishing, his deepest love, during a stakeout, giving the author a chance to wax eloquent:

The river babbled its eternal nursery-rhyme song at his feet, and the water slid under his eyes with a mesmeric swiftness.

Grant is the main figure of several other of Tey's mysteries, notably The Daughter of Time (see recommendation below). In that novel, Grant tries to unravel the true facts behind the actual historic case involving King Richard III and his alleged murder of his three nephews. But Man in the Queue is Grant's worthy introduction into the literary mystery world, and it's a solid case to challenge the inspector in his debut.

A police officer who was impressed with a hard-luck story, however well told, would be little use in a force designed for the suppression of that most plausible of creatures, the criminal.

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Tey, Josephine. The Daughter of Time.   

Probably my favorite and most unusual mystery stories ever. Alan Grant, police inspector, while laid up in a hospital recovering from an injury, researches the mystery of King Richard III and his reputation for murdering his nephews. Historical research, original documents, and records are examined by Grant to determine the facts and actual murderer, whether it be Richard or someone else. Absolutely fascinating and very highly recommended.