Man in the Queue Summary and Reviews

Man in the Queue
by Josephine Tey

Man in the Queue
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Book Summary Information

Author: Josephine Tey
Introduction: Robert Barnard
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1995-11-29
ISBN: 0684815028
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Touchstone

Book Reviews of Man in the Queue

Book Review: The Man in the Queue, written in 1929, is amazingly undated.
Summary: 5 Stars

The "Man in the Queue", by Josephine Tey, commences on London's West Side, where "Didn't You Know?", the hit musical, is in the last week of its run. Its newly famous star, Ray Marcable, who is London's darling, is leaving for America to seek even greater fame and fortune there. The show has been sold out for weeks, but there is a huge line (the queue of the title) outside, waiting for a chance to get same day only seats for the show. The people in line have been waiting several hours, on the whole good-naturedly, but there is considerable pushing and shoving and re-aligning as the line finally begins to move forward. When a middle-aged woman reaches the ticket booth, she indignantly turns to say something to the man who is pushing hard against her back and is horrified when he falls to the ground dead with a silver dagger sticking out of his back. No one can say when the dead man was stabbed, for the crush of the crowd has supported and carried him forward for some time

When his body is examined by the police, the young man is revealed to be carrying no identification, and has no tags or marks in his clothes. The only item of interest is a service revolver in his pocket, with fingerprints on it that prove not to be the victim's. Inspector Grant of Scotland Yard is assigned the case and the remainder of the book is an absorbing police procedural documenting the painstaking process of his quest to discover first the victim's identity and then his murderer. The search truly does become a quest for Grant, who is moved by something in the face of the victim and angered by the anonymity and callousness of his end.

Although The Man in the Queue was written almost 70 years ago, in 1929, it has aged amazingly well and will not be read as a quaint period piece, even though the war that many of the male characters fought in and the female ones nursed in is The Great War, WWI. One reason for the lack of datedness in the book is the fact that although Tey was writing in the Golden Age of British mysteries, her novels are driven more by the personalities and motivations of her characters than by the tricky kind of puzzles that depend on timetables and exotic poisons. What causes people to commit evil acts is more interesting to her than merely naming a villain. In fact, the subtext of The Man in the Queue is the question of whether there is a villain in the story at all.

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