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A Shilling for Candles (Inspector Alan Grant, #2)

Josephine Tey

Start date: December 15, 2024

Finish date: January 8, 2025

Discussion: Group reads

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* Nominations for November 2025 group read
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What Members Thought

Feb 12, 2008 Nancy Oakes rated it really liked it

Shelves: crime-fiction-uk, crime-fiction, classic-mystery-fiction

really, it's around a 3.6 rounded up.

This is my second time with this book, and I got much more out of it this time around than the last, which is generally the case with me; I think the huge difference was that this time I also had more insight into the author herself. I have to be honest -- so far my favorite of the rereads has been her The Franchise Affair -- in my very humble opinion, it's among the best of her mysteries and A Shilling for Candles doesn't rate as highly as that one. That do really, it's around a 3.6 rounded up.

This is my second time with this book, and I got much more out of it this time around than the last, which is generally the case with me; I think the huge difference was that this time I also had more insight into the author herself. I have to be honest -- so far my favorite of the rereads has been her The Franchise Affair -- in my very humble opinion, it's among the best of her mysteries and A Shilling for Candles doesn't rate as highly as that one. That doesn't mean it's not good, just less enjoyable for me personally.

Having just recently finished Jennifer Morag Henderson's excellent biography of the author, Josephine Tey: A Life (which I'll be talking about here very shortly), I find myself completely in agreement with her -- the more a Tey reader understands about her life, the easier it is to appreciate and to understand her work. I wish the biography had come out sooner; now I feel like I ought to go back and reread more of Tey's crime novels for better perspective.

The supposed suicide of actress Christine Clay turns out to be a murder in this novel, and a ready-made suspect is on hand, supposedly making things easy for Inspector Grant. However, the suspect flees, and while the suspect is being hunted, Grant finds himself having to examine different lines of inquiry that move him into the shallow world of celebrity, the dead woman's personal history, religious strangeness, and they even take him into the realm of out-there astrology before the truth is at last revealed. And I have to say, I seriously didn't see that ending coming -- a complete surprise.

Getting back to why knowing something of Tey's life helps to put things into better perspective as a reader, I could easily see how much of Tey's experiences had an impact on her character creations. As just one example (without giving anything away), Tey had made lifelong friends among a group of women in the theater world, women she'd come to know in her work as playwright Gordon Daviot. One of these women was Marda Vanne, whose fictional counterpart Marta Hallard turns up in more than one Tey novel as an actress friend of Grant's. As another example, when Christine Clay's will is read, it turns out that she's left money to the National Trust, "for the preservation of the beauty of England." Tey did the same in her will. Plus, there's the central focus on the pitfalls of fame and fortune in this novel that may play off of Tey's own reluctance to be in the public limelight.

Recommended to people who enjoy vintage crime, but do be aware that many of Tey's ideas in this novel do not conform to modern PC sensitivities. Frankly, I don't really give a fig about whether or not a book written in the 1930s conforms to today's standards of "correctness", but I have read reader responses that include complaints about this issue, so you've been warned. Overall -- a good read, not great, but it was fun getting to the end. ...more

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Oct 14, 2010 Tracey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1901-1950, england, mystery, theatah

Another excellent example of "not your ordinary mystery novel". A body is discovered on a beach, and the immediate assumption of suicide is soon contradicted by the evidence. (I have to say I'm a little impressed that the article found with the body which indicates murder is never mentioned in anything I've read online about the book (and in fact morphed into something else for the film adaptation (1937's Young and Innocent, said to be Hitchcock's personal favorite among his British films); I'm ...more

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Jan 17, 2021 Louise Culmer rated it liked it

The murder of a famous film star caused a lot of trouble for Inspector Grant, as he tries to track down the young man suspected of her murder. Quite an enjoyable mystery, though it wasn’t too difficult to work out whodunnit. there are some disconcerting moments - a conversation with a Jewish character which has not aged well for instance, and some equally painful remarks about Jews towards the end. Erica Burgoyne,the resourceful Chief Constable’s daughter, who gets involved at one point, was my ...more

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Apr 08, 2017 Jan C rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018, gr-group-read, mystery, england

I like Tey but I sometimes get bogged down with her.

Just the second book in the series although I did read The Daughter of Time way back when I was in college. I look forward to reading it again as I work my way through Tey's books.

I got bogged down so I probably lost track of a lot. I did notice that the victim's death had been predicted. But the killer was beyond me. There were enough other people being picked up for other charges that it became a trifle confusing after a while. ...more

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Jan 09, 2019 Tom rated it did not like it

A typical example of English anti-semitic novels. One of the characters is a Jew and the descriptions of him - always referred to as the Jew - are horrible stereotypes. But what do you expect from the English? One of the worst groups of people who have ever plagued the world.

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Feb 26, 2021 Nanosynergy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: british, mysteries-thrillers-espionage, series, fiction, fiction-1930s, 2021read

Published in the 1930s. Some nice characters. Some good misdirection, although the meandering misdirection got a wee bit too much for me and seemed to make the story drag in spots. Be warned: again cringeworthy racism - this time regarding Jews.

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