From the Bookshelf of Reading the Detectives…

An Expert in Murder (Josephine Tey, #1)

Nicola Upson

Start date: April 12, 2018

Finish date: May 5, 2018

Discussion: Buddy reads

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What Members Thought

Aug 10, 2011 Bev rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-mystery, mystery, mcpl-book

Love this era and Upson does a great job evoking the time period as well as crafting a very smart mystery. The only thing I didn't like was that I really loved the first character to be murdered. She was so finely drawn in the short span of the book that she appeared in that I wanted to see her develop. Didn't get the chance. ...more

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Apr 09, 2011 Tracey rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: hist-myst, cozy, mystery

This is billed as the first in a series of mysteries starring writer Josephine Tey as the detective, and that puzzles me a little. She was a primary character, but not the primary character, and didn't really serve as the detective ...

Full review on my blog...

The choice to take a real person and cast her as the putative main detective was an odd one to me. It always makes me a little queasy when a writer uses real people as characters, unless it's done very very well. An Expert in Murder trouble This is billed as the first in a series of mysteries starring writer Josephine Tey as the detective, and that puzzles me a little. She was a primary character, but not the primary character, and didn't really serve as the detective ...

Full review on my blog...

The choice to take a real person and cast her as the putative main detective was an odd one to me. It always makes me a little queasy when a writer uses real people as characters, unless it's done very very well. An Expert in Murder troubled me a bit; it was such a peculiar concept. First of all, there was no Josephine Tey, per se. The writer's name was Elizabeth Mackintosh; Gordon Daviot was the pen name she used for several books and her plays, and Josephine Tey was the name she used for her books; from what I can see she never went by "Josephine Tey" in her usual life. Perhaps needless to say, the entire plot of the murder was fabricated for this book; there was a situation similair to "that business with Elliot Vintner", though from the little I've found online it didn't amount to remotely what happened in this book, and there was, of course, no murder whatsoever. The cast of the play was created for this book. I can't but think this would have worked at least as well had she simply cast the story into an entirely fictional setting: here is a stage production in London in the 30's, and the play was written by this woman who is an acclaimed writer, and this is what happens. I don't see any special reason why the writer in question had to be Josephine Tey, apart from as a selling point. The real detective is Detective Inspector Archie Penrose, and he was a very good character - I liked him, I liked his Sergeant, I liked his setting. I could wish the series were simply based around him - though that might wind up being more Roderick Alleyn than Alan Grant.

I liked it. There was a decent mystery there, and engaging characters, and a believable setting in a London theatre. But the story-telling style drove me slightly crazy at times. It had a heaping helping of the dreaded head-hopping. The latter is something which, unless I'm mistaken, is more acceptable in England than in the US; it never bothered me before I learned it was a Bad Thing, and rarely since, but it bothered me here. The narrative of the book is choppy, with a more sedate sort of head-hopping, with lots of points of view. What irritated me, though, was the stingy doling out of information. It's necessary in a mystery to withhold information, of course. And another Bad Thing new writers are warned against is the dreaded info-dump, in which clumps of information are scattered like undissolved lumps of flour in a cake. The "As you know, Jim" syndrome. Well, Nicola Upson took that directive very much to heart, because she refuses to divulge plot points until she absolutely has to. "That business last year with Elliot Vintner" is mentioned on page 8, and the reader does not find out what "that business" was for chapters. The same thing happens with a few other minor mysteries: what did Elspeth's boyfriend do that has him in so much trouble with his boss? What on earth is going on with the two main actors? I figured that one out fairly easily - but it was annoying to have so much information withheld, sometimes for no very good reason. The climax of the story was melodramatic, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing it's not a very good thing here. The elements of WWI underlying the whole thing were well done; the elements of the theatre were well done if not as alluring as, say, Ngaio Marsh did; the characters were enjoyable. The plot was perhaps the least involving part of the whole thing for me. I probably won't actively seek out the other books in the series; I'll pick them up if I come across them, but I'll be fine if I don't come across them. ...more

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Oct 10, 2012 Charlotte (Buried in Books) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: crime

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May 31, 2010 Jan C rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: england, mystery

Very enjoyable.

Josephine Tey, besides being an author in her own right, is now a character in a book. Actually, in a series of books, since there is at least one more.

When I was in college we were asked to read one of her books, The Daughter of Time. I didn't know that she was also a dramatist (under another name) and I think she had other books under a third name.

Here, she is coming down from Scotland for the closing of her play, Richard of Bordeaux (this is actually the play that helped make ...more

1 like · Like · see review