"The Man in the Queue" by Josephine Tey

 Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time was chosen by the Crime Writer's Association as the best crime novel of all time; she also was ranked in 11th place for The Franchise Affair. Her historical play Richard of Bordeaux (written under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot, her real name was Elizabeth Mackintosh) was also a best-seller in the 1930s, propelling John Gielgud to superstardom and even making it to TV as far back as 1938. Tey was a respected writer. The Man in the Queue was her debut mystery novel, submitted for, and winning first prize in, a competition. It introduces her detective Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant. 

A man in a queue waiting for sold-at-the-door seats in a theatre is stabbed in the back. The man has removed all identifying marks on his clothing and has only a few coins in his possession, but he does have a revolver in his pocket. The police have to identify the victim and interview the other people in the queue. Swiftly, they suspect a "dago" (the book suffers from a certain amount of racial prejudice) who was in the queue and then left it. Much of the excitement of the novel is generated by the process of identifying this suspect and a thrilling manhunt across the Scottish moors that reminded me of The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan. But once the quarry is captured, can the police prove their case? And, of course, there is a final twist in the tail.

It is a classic of the genre, despite the old-fashioned police procedures (I kept screaming 'forensics!' as Grant repeatedly handles the murder weapon), and a thoroughly readable book. 

There are some fabulous descriptions:

• “A pleasant country, England, at ten of a bright morning. Even the awful little suburban villas had lost that air of aggressiveness born of their inferiority complex, and were shining self-forgetful and demure in the clear light. Their narrow, inhospitable doors were no longer ugly in the atrociousness of cheap paint and appliqué mouldings; they were entrances of jade and carnelian and lapis lazuli and onyx into particular separate heavens. Their gardens, with their pert ill-dressed rows of tulips and meagre seed-sown grass, were lovely as ever the Hanging Gardens of Babylon had been. Here and there a line of gay motley child's clothes danced and ballooned with the breeze in a necklace of coloured laughter.” (Ch 5)
• “It sounded like the protesting row of an alarmed hen as she rockets over a fence to safety.” (Ch 11)
• “The river babbled its eternal nursery-rhyme song at his feet.” (Ch 11)
• “He felt grateful to the ancient hat that collapsed more than drooped over his face.” (Ch 11)
• “Gowbridge Police Court is at no time a cheerful building. It has the mouldering atmosphere of a mausoleum combined with the disinfected and artificial cheerfulness of a hospital, the barrenness of a schoolroom, the stuffiness of a tube, and the ugliness of a meeting-house.” (Ch 16)

I'm not convinced that every single clue is absolutely fair but my joy in reading an intelligently written whodunnit (there are some awful examples of the genre) was great.

Selected quotes:

• “In the old days in the Highlands, to take to the Hills had been synonymous with flying from Justice - what's the Irish call being on the run.” (Ch 10)
• “In any human relationship you've got to decide for yourself, apart from evidence, what a man is like.” (Ch 18)

As a dweller on the Sunshine Coast, I was charmed that a chapter was set in Eastbourne, complete with a mention of Holywell and Beachy Head. 

January 2026

First published by in 1929 under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot

My Penguin paperback was issued in 1978

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

Josephine Tey crime novels:

• The Man in the Queue also published as Killer in the Crowd, originally written under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot (1929)
• A Shilling for Candles (1936)
• Miss Pym Disposes (1946)
• The Franchise Affair (1948)
• Brat Farrar also called Come and Kill Me (1949)
• To Love and Be Wise (1950)
• The Daughter of Time (1951)
• The Singing Sands (1952)