Brat Farrar by Josphine Tey

Reading Angel with Two Faces by Nicola Upson recently, which of course features crime writer Josephine Tey, I was reminded of Tey's Brat Farrar. I have read and enjoyed this book several times but I decided it was time for another re-read.

Orphan Brat Farrar returns to England after a number of years absence. He is seen on the streets of London by Alec Loding and mistaken for Simon Ashby, a young man from Loding's home village. When Loding realises Brat is not Simon he immediately forms plans for a scam. Simon Ashby is about to celebrate his 21st and inherit his dead father's estate. This event would not be happening except for the mysterious disappearance of Simon's elder twin brother Patrick some years earlier when they were still boys. Loding persuades Brat to impersonate the missing Patrick, take his place and inherit instead of Simon. Brat should then send Loding a regular income for his help in coaching Brat on Patrick's life. Loding had been well placed to observe the Ashbys over the years as the families were very close.

Despite the scamming premise of the book the reader's sympathies are immediately with orphan Brat. He is not a man without morals (unlike Loding who is defrauding people he knows well) and takes some persuading to join in the scam. His descent into joining Loding's plan is slow and believable. We see Brat's inner self wrestle with his lack of belonging, his need for a family and for a place in the world. His only emotional anchor is his love for horses, with whom he worked in the USA after he left the orphnage, and it is this that is his undoing. Loding reveals the Ashbys are horse breeders and Brat is won over. He can't resist any more.

The playing out of family loyalties and personalities when the bombshell of Patrick's reappearance in their lives explodes is masterly. Beatrice Ashby, the aunt who brought up the Ashby children after the death of her brother and his wife, and who has spent years being haunted by images of what may have happened to Patrick, is one of my favourite literary characters. Her world is torn apart by Brat's arrival but even on the day she meets him, still unsure that he is not an impostor she is compassion through and through:

She turned at the door to say goodbye. he was standing in th middle of the room watching her go, leaving Mr Sandal to shepherd her out. he looked remote and lonely. And she thought; "If this is patrick, Patrick come home again, and I am leaving him like this, as if her were a casual acquaintance -". It was more than she could bear, the thought of the boy's loneliness.

She went back to him, took his face lightly in her gloved hand, and kissed his cheek. "Welcome back my dear, " she said.

And this in the end, a family, is all Brat craves. But he is now committed to being an impostor but from the inside he is the first person to really be in a position to solve the mystery of what really happened to the missing Patrick Ashby. How Tey resolves the difficulties Brat has got himself into, and manages the new emotional ties he forms, is a delight to watch.

A lovely book combining the same warmth, insight and intrigue as The Franchise Affair.

The first image of Brat Farrar above is from the modern paperback. I re-read my own copy a Pan paperback which you can see here:

This copy was purchased a few years ago from the lovely Mike and Ann Sims from A Book for All Reasons whose site is an excellent resource for early twentieth century fiction, especially Georgette Heyer. I love the stylised cover art here: the young man shadowy at the back has taken a petulant stance that looks more like he is in trouble for not eating his greens than he looks angry at the return of a usurper to his inheritance!

On a related note: does anyone remember seeing the BBC adaptation of this, modernised I think, in the 1980s. It stared Mark Greenstreet who was brilliant as both Brat and Simon Ashby. Why oh why have the Beeb never put this out on video or DVD. With the mini Tey revival going on at the moment I can't think of a better time for them to let us watch it again.

Footsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer

Georgette Heyer is best know for her Regency romances where her combination of historical detail and witty characterisation won her many fans. She also wrote twelve detective stories; Footsteps in the Dark is the first of these.

Footsteps in the Dark is a very readable and enjoyable volume if you are Heyer fan or otherwise know what to expect. Three siblings inherit an old house, The Priory. Peter, Margaret and Celia together with Celia's barrister husband and an aunt move into the building with the idea of a long vacation. However, things don't go as planned. Things, instead, literally go bump in the night: monk-like ghosts flit around the garden and someone is found dead. Is the explanation supernatural or criminal? Well, no prizes for guessing.

If you start this book expecting cutting edge plot or gritty realism you'll be sorely disappointed. What we have here is escapism criminology. The plot is a little thin, so what keeps you reading, as always with Heyer, is the characterisation, the witty asides, the flashes of realism in relationships. The majority of the book is laden with every cliche from secret passages to bits reminiscent of Mrs Radcliffe's much parodied Mysteries of Udolpho. In fact, so busy with such fussy fancy is the plot that one almost expects Scooby and Shaggy to appear looking for a snack in the castle kitchens. Instead we have unflappable Aunt Lilian who bears a strong resemblance to some of Bertie Wooster's aunts.

This was Heyer's very first detective novel and it shows, but provided you are prepared for all the pseudo-medieval fixtures and fittings, it is still a great duvet read. By the time Heyer wrote her next crime work her husband was a barrister and her plots had improved. So, if you've read this and didn't like her work, do try another as it is not typical. I think my favourite is Detection Unlimited.

This review is crossed posted at the Georgette Heyer Challenge. You might also find the article Georgette Heyer - Queen of Mystery and Suspense by Margaret Rogers of Hessay Books interesting. It is one of the collector's guides listed in the bar on the left.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield is, on the whole a very readable book. I had heard some mixed reviews, which I think helped as I approached the book with fewer expectations, and in truth I was able to suspend disbelief and rattle along with its Gothic intricacies very happily. I don't think the book was done any real service by the pre-publication publicity; don't expect to love it and you might find that nonetheless you like it very much indeed.

Like the even more readable The Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon the main character/ narrator Margaret Lea is employed in the family bookshop and engaged by a book and a mysterious author Vida Winter, sets off on a quest to discover more. Margaret Lea is a minor biographer whose diligence brings her to the attention of the aging and immensely popular reclusive novelist Vida Winter. Miss Winter has never told the truth about her past but now she is about to do so for the first time. With Margaret Lea we follow this narration of dysfunctional families, uncontrollable children, incestuous love affairs, and people in attics, house fires and decaying buildings. Margaret channels Vida's narration, comments on it, digests it, propels our thoughts forward and backward through the possibilities surrounding the mystery, and on balance this is handled very neatly. We also follow Margaret in the present as she make discoveries herself, though this is less neat as Margaret is quite a thin character who lacks bite within the narrative and a convincing life away from her narratorial role.

Read it as an acceptable jobbing work of suspense or a workaday Gothic thriller and The Thirteenth Tale is a fine enough book. It is laced with Gothic allusion (it doesn't take a genius to spot the Brontes and Daphne du Maurier), it is fairly pacy, the narrative tricks and turns are generally pulled off, and the denouement came as a surprise. The surprise was in part I think was because it is only a fraction of an inch this side of plausible, but it is just about plausible, so I did not feel too cheated. It is not fine art but it is a fine Sunday afternoon read. One of the most annoying things was a lapse into a tell rather than show method of characterisation on occasion, and as Geranium Cat says, it is hard to differentiate between Margaret's voice and Vida's. If you approach the book not expecting Jane Eyre then this is not a problem, but I wouldn't like to give it an unequivocal recommendation for that reason. Some like it; some don't.

It was published too close to The Shadow of the Wind I think to have been directly influenced by it but it has many similar features. I preferred The Shadow of the Wind despite some of the trite narratorial quirks like posthumously letters of improbable length solving part of the mystery. I think there are two reasons for my preference: firstly Lucia Graves's (daughter of Robert) translation seems very elegant (I have no idea what the original Spanish literary qualities were like), and secondly the main character is more firmly part of an active narrative and has a distinct personality and feelings, rather than being a device for communicating like Margaret Lea.

Having said all that, on the basis of The Thirteenth Tale I would be very interested to see what Diane Setterfield does next. She is really a very good story teller and I look forward to with what, and how, she weaves her next tale.

If you are interested in Diane Setterfield then you might also enjoy this article by Sally Mackenzie of Macbuiks, which is one of our Collector's Guides over on the left.