Just finished Josephine Tey’s final mystery, The Singing Sands (1952), published shortly after her death at age 55. Caveat: I’ve written earlier that I am not a mystery aficionado. This is only the third one I’ve read as an adult, the other two being The Hound of the Baskervilles, a Holmesian novel by Arthur Conan Doyle, and Tey’s own The Daughter of Time. As a kid I read about thirty or forty Encyclopedia Brown stories. That’s the extent of my experience with mysteries. So if you happen across this little review and you’re a huge fan, and I say something sacrilegious, don’t rake me over the coals. You’ve been warned.
That being said, I liked it. The story unfolded with the gentle ease of an author who knows exactly how it should, chapter by chapter, page by page, paragraph by paragraph. Her personality does come through in the writing, and it’s immensely likable. Her characters are immensely likable, too; even the ones we’re not supposed to like, we like. There’s humor and humanity in her pen, and I found that uncommon and enjoyable.
Detective Alan Grant of Scotland Yard is suffering from claustrophobia brought on by overwork. Deciding a rare vacation is in order, our protagonist takes the train up to his cousin’s place way up north in Scotland for a few weeks of fishing, relaxation, and recovery. However, as he’s exiting the train at his destination, he accidentally happens upon a corpse – a young man, discovered prone on the floor of his compartment with a shattered skull and an empty bottle of whiskey. Inadvertently Grant winds up with a copy of the newspaper from B Seven’s compartment, and later that day comes upon the poem –
The beasts that talk
The streams that stand,
The stones that walk,
The singing sands,
…………………
…………………
That guard the way
To Paradise.
The poem stays with him those first few idyllic days of his vacation, and, powerless to prevent it, his detecting instincts kick in. Soon his entire vacation is devoted to finding out just who exactly this corpse in B Seven was, and if it was the accident it appears to have been.
As you may guess, things are not what they seem. Grant’s investigations take him all throughout Scotland, back to England, and even to the continent. The key is that one line in the poem to which the book takes its title. The Singing Sands. What does that mean to you? It winds up referring to something that has always been a minor but vivid interest of mine, and because of that, the pages turned quicker and quicker as the book reached its conclusion.
My only cause for pause is that it seemed so gentle. Yes, there is murder, and there is treachery and plenty of vanity, the basest of all human traits and the cause of all evil, according to Grant. But the story proceeds from A to B to C … all the way to Z very casually. In a way, that’s reassuring; reading a Tey mystery (at least the two of her half-dozen I’ve read so far) you know the crime will get solved at the end, incrementally. The reader is not required to solve the crime, merely to journey with the detective and marvel at all the clues and sleight-of-hand that the character picks up which he, the reader, may have overlooked.
Could it be that Encyclopedia Brown in the fourth grade turned me off to mysteries forever?
Anyway, I like Ms. Tey a lot. It is a shame so talented, so effortless a writer died relatively early, when she could easily have published fifteen or twenty more novels. I’ll keep my eye out for more of her stuff, and if I come across it in my travels I’ll pick them up. Somehow, it’s reassuring to visit a world where the bad guys never truly get away with their crimes, and the good guys are so warm you wish you could really sit down and spend some time with them. Even if for only a week or so.
Grade: B+
That being said, I liked it. The story unfolded with the gentle ease of an author who knows exactly how it should, chapter by chapter, page by page, paragraph by paragraph. Her personality does come through in the writing, and it’s immensely likable. Her characters are immensely likable, too; even the ones we’re not supposed to like, we like. There’s humor and humanity in her pen, and I found that uncommon and enjoyable.
Detective Alan Grant of Scotland Yard is suffering from claustrophobia brought on by overwork. Deciding a rare vacation is in order, our protagonist takes the train up to his cousin’s place way up north in Scotland for a few weeks of fishing, relaxation, and recovery. However, as he’s exiting the train at his destination, he accidentally happens upon a corpse – a young man, discovered prone on the floor of his compartment with a shattered skull and an empty bottle of whiskey. Inadvertently Grant winds up with a copy of the newspaper from B Seven’s compartment, and later that day comes upon the poem –
The beasts that talk
The streams that stand,
The stones that walk,
The singing sands,
…………………
…………………
That guard the way
To Paradise.
The poem stays with him those first few idyllic days of his vacation, and, powerless to prevent it, his detecting instincts kick in. Soon his entire vacation is devoted to finding out just who exactly this corpse in B Seven was, and if it was the accident it appears to have been.
As you may guess, things are not what they seem. Grant’s investigations take him all throughout Scotland, back to England, and even to the continent. The key is that one line in the poem to which the book takes its title. The Singing Sands. What does that mean to you? It winds up referring to something that has always been a minor but vivid interest of mine, and because of that, the pages turned quicker and quicker as the book reached its conclusion.
My only cause for pause is that it seemed so gentle. Yes, there is murder, and there is treachery and plenty of vanity, the basest of all human traits and the cause of all evil, according to Grant. But the story proceeds from A to B to C … all the way to Z very casually. In a way, that’s reassuring; reading a Tey mystery (at least the two of her half-dozen I’ve read so far) you know the crime will get solved at the end, incrementally. The reader is not required to solve the crime, merely to journey with the detective and marvel at all the clues and sleight-of-hand that the character picks up which he, the reader, may have overlooked.
Could it be that Encyclopedia Brown in the fourth grade turned me off to mysteries forever?
Anyway, I like Ms. Tey a lot. It is a shame so talented, so effortless a writer died relatively early, when she could easily have published fifteen or twenty more novels. I’ll keep my eye out for more of her stuff, and if I come across it in my travels I’ll pick them up. Somehow, it’s reassuring to visit a world where the bad guys never truly get away with their crimes, and the good guys are so warm you wish you could really sit down and spend some time with them. Even if for only a week or so.
Grade: B+
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