Gordon Daviot was the pseudonym of Elizabeth Mackintosh, author of one brilliantly successful play, Richard of Bordeaux, several others of intelligence but brief runs, and many which did not achieve stage productions. A Scotswoman born in Inverness, she was the daughter of Colin and Josephine Horne Mackintosh. She was educated at the Royal Academy, Inverness, and Anstey Physical Training College, Birmingham, and her first work was as a physical-training instructress, an experience which formed the background of one of her detective novels, Miss Pym Disposes (1947). All except the first of these novels was written under the pseudonym Josephine Tey. The first, The Man in the Queue, was written for a competition and published in 1929 under the name Gordon Daviot, before her success in the theater as a playwright under this pseudonym: the work already showed interest in the stage and used a murder in a theater queue as...