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The Man in the Queue

The Man in the Queue

Cozy MysteryCrime
Pages
281
Published
1929

Synopsis

The Man in the Queue is a classic Golden Age detective novel by Josephine Tey, first published under her pseudonym Gordon Daviot. When a man named Albert Sorrell is stabbed and killed while waiting in line for standing room at a West End musical comedy, Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard takes over the case. The victim has no identification, no clear motive against him, and was surrounded by people who saw nothing unusual — until it was too late. Tey's meticulous plotting makes this one of the defining fair-play whodunits of her career.

Prose complexity
5/10

Vibe

MysteriousIntellectual
Mystery BoxMultiple POVs

Genres

Cozy Mystery Crime

About the author

J
Josephine Tey

Josephine Tey is one of the best-known and best-loved of all crime writers. She began to write full-time after the successful publication of her first novel, The Man in the Queue (1929), which introduced Inspector Grant of Scotland Yard. In 1937 she returned to crime writing with A Shilling for Candles, but it wasn't until after the Second World War that the majority of her crime novels were published. Josephine Tey died in 1952, leaving her entire estate to the National Trust.

Characters

Alan GrantProtagonist

A meticulous, observant Scotland Yard inspector and amateur sleuth who solves the case through careful deduction rather than action.

Albert SorrellSupporting

The murdered man in whom Grant's investigation begins; a bookmaker with no obvious motive for his death.

All characters in The Man in the Queue