By the end of the novel, the strongest impression I was left with was not a clever mystery puzzle but of a deeply compassionate story about the damage done to men by the war, the vulnerability of women and how the theatre could help them achieve independence and the small ways in which we all fail ourselves and each other. The main character (Josephine Tey) was extremely dull -- she didn't like being open or personal with anyone, including many if not all of her closest friends, though we are to feel sorry for her because she has suffered a horrible tragedy. I know she is based on a real-life person, but she was a dry as a stack of toast served at a wedding reception. As I mentioned, Josephine Tey’s books are some of my favourite classic crime novels; “The Daughter of Time” got me really fascinated with Richard III; and my recent re-read of “The Franchise Affair” was a knockout.

Richard of Bordeaux" has been the surprise hit of the season, with pacifist themes that strike a chord in a world still haunted by war. I don’t know anyone else who could spend a day with all that enthusiasm and still look sane at the end of it. I shouldn’t be talking to you like this when we’ve only just met and you want to read your paper, but I must thank you now I’ve got the chance. Greeting Lydia with a hug, Josephine introduced the girl as a friend she had met on the journey down. It had been hard to get to know her, as she discouraged intimacy and rarely gave her confidence to anyone, but the effort had been worthwhile.Back in 1934 she's very successful, her play "Richard of Bordeaux" is on the final week of it's very successful run in London before it goes on a countrywide tour and possibly film Her arrival coincides with a complicated murder, this drags in an old friend, Detective Inspector Archie Penrose and both of them have to look into their pasts to fix the present.

I’m not used to first class,’ she admitted, picking up a silver butter knife to admire the railway crest on the handle. This girl was more receptive, and she watched while the couple circled round each other, wondering what the outcome would be. The two strike up a friendship on the journey, as the girl is a fan of Tey's work, and is on her way to see the play again. The actress, always gracious when faced with her public, went through the routine of conversation and autographs that had become second nature to her, whilst managing to make Elspeth feel that she was the first person ever to mention the poignancy of the death scene.

Gosh–how lovely,’ said Elspeth, looking round at the bronze lamps, plush carpets and walnut veneer panelling, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever eaten anywhere as luxurious as this before. I gather there are more Archie Penrose mysteries on the way, and I'd not be at all surprised if I found myself reading them. I was given an insight into the emotional state of a generation haunted by The Great War and already standing in the shadow of the next one.

Terry, though, shares with Gielgud the danger of being homosexual in an era in which male relationships brought disgrace and imprisonment. Stamping her feet against the coldness of the day, Lydia Beaumont was nevertheless in a remarkably good mood. I was really charmed by it when I read it earlier in the year, I think its my favourite of hers… so far, though I do love Miss Marple.

The country was recovering from the First World War (which has its echoes in the story) but uneasily aware that another is likely. This is one of those books in which almost every character turns out to be connected to everyone else in several ways - even the meeting on the train between Josephine and Elspeth was not coincidental. Her hands had been clasped together in front of her in a mockery of applause at the scene which someone had created for her benefit in the vacant space opposite. Upson doles out period detail, not in a surge of encyclopedic re-telling,but as a backdrop for the scenes as they play out, providing the clues needed to piece together the compulsion that drives someone to murder. At six o’clock, when she walked down the steps to the south-bound platform, she expected to find the air of excitement which always accompanies the muddled loading of people and suitcases onto a departing train.

There had, thank God, been no repeat of the snow wreaths and roaring winds which had brought the Highland railway to a sudden standstill the year before, leaving her and many others stranded in waiting rooms overnight. She did not admit it to Elspeth, but there was another reason why her heart was no longer in the play that had made her name: that business last year with Elliott Vintner had soured the whole experience for her. I found it substantial, like a five course meal, appetizers,soup, salad, entree and dessert, the story delivered to the table and absorbed by the reader, bite by bite, detail by detail, carried by the characters, themselves highly believable and compelling.Let’s go and have something to eat,’ she suggested to Elspeth, conscious that the young woman’s enthusiasm for her work was beginning to wear a little thin with everyone else in the compartment. Its ‘To Love and Be Wise’ not sure how good or not it is, I will give it a whirl and let you all know. The comment was uncharacteristic of his sergeant, who usually had a more positive view of human nature despite years of experience to the contrary.