Man in the Queue
by Josephine Tey

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Book Reviews of Man in the Queue

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

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.

Literature & Fiction Books

• Mystery & Thrillers