Coming at the tail end of the Golden Age of crime fiction, Tey does not escape some of the less attractive attitudes of her contemporaries: anti-Semitism, contempt for the working class, a deep uneasiness about any enthusiasm (for example Scottish nationalism) that, to her, smacks of crankiness. If Agatha Christie’s “Anthony Astor” in Three Act Tragedy is indeed a hit at Tey, then Christie targets Tey’s weaknesses squarely when she talks about “her spiritual home—a boarding house in Bournemouth,” with the implication of dreary respectability and conventionality. But that is to seize on the
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