Salcott St Mary is an English village beloved by writers: it is an artist's colony containing three novelists, a broadcaster, a playwright, a dancer, and an actress. Enter Leslie Searle, an amazingly good-looking photographer from the USA and suddenly the heads of all the women are turned and the men become jealous. Then he vanishes and Inspector Alan Grant from Scotland Yard is called in to investigate.
It's a delightful mystery of the classic kind with a clever solution, written in Tey's elegant if slightly dated style. Page-turner? I read it in just over a day.
Selected quotes:
- "Grant paused to look at the yelling crowd asparagus-packed into the long Georgian room." (Ch 1)
- "His actor's need to be liked was stronger than his resentment, and he was putting forth all his charm." (Ch 4)
- "It was difficult to decide how much of the facade was barricade and howe much was mere poster-hoarding." (Ch 11)
- "You commit murder because you are one-idead. Or have become one-idead. As long as you have a variety of interests you can't care about any one of them to the point of murder. It is when you have all your eggs in the same basket, or only one egg left in the basket, that you lose your sense of proportion." (Ch 13)
Interesting side-note: apparently in those days people "watched" radio plays.
A very enjoyable read, recommended for readers of classic crime.
February 2026; 256 pages
- First published by Peter Davies in 1950
- My paperback version issued by Arrow Books
This review was written by
the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling
and The Kids of God- 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)
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