"A Shilling for Candles" by Josephine Tey

A classic whodunnit from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Tey's Inspector Grant on his second outing investigates the drowning of a Christine Clay, a movie star (married to the son of a duke), off the south coast. Recurring characters include Sergeant Williams, actress Marta Hallard and journalist Jammy Hopkins. The suspects include the husband, a man who was staying with the 

Distressingly - although casual and not-so-casual anti-semitism was typical of its time - Tey is quite prepared to stigmatise Jews on the basis of alleged racial stereotypes. There's also a prejudicial comment about a woman who does not have white skin. As with her other books, she also has a strange obsession with the idea that one can read character from a person's face, displayed in a scene where Grant is looking at the faces of participants at a monastic service: “Some were cranks (one saw the same faces at ‘anti’ meetings and folk dance revivals), some fanatics (masochists looking for a modern hair-shirt), some simple, some at odds with the world and looking for sanctuary, some at odds with themselves and looking for peace." (Ch 21)

It is written in the slightly camp style associated with this sort of cosy mystery, especially when they involve film stars, actresses and assorted artistes. Very much of its genre. I was slightly disappointed that the crucial evidence was withheld until the denouement so I felt I hadn't been given a fair chance to solve it myself. Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable and entertaining page turner.

Selected quotes:

• “Every six months she was in a different social sphere, she went up at such a rate. that takes a lot of living up to - like a diver coming up from a long way below.” ( Ch 5)
• “An unquiet life is a greater misery than wearing the badge of conformity.” (Ch 7)
• “Chamber music was much more attractive when one could combine it with tea at one's club and seeing about that frock at Debenham’s.” (Ch 19)
• “She had a high thin voice, and when she became enthusiastic or excited her delivery was painfully like a very old gramophone record played on a very cheap gramophone.” (Ch 19)

ASfC was adapted in 1937 into a movie called Young and Innocent which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

April 2026; 246 pages

First published in 1936 by Methuen (although my edition suggests first publication was in 1953 by William Heinemann)

My paperback edition was issued by Arrow Books in 2011

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)