Josephine Tey's reputation as a detective novelist rests on eight mysteries. Like her contemporaries in the genre, Tey portrayed a world in which crimes are solved; but she rejected the tidy conclusions characteristic of classic detective fiction, preferring to leave her readers vaguely uneasy, often disconcerted, at the novel's end. Those responsible for inflicting pain and suffering, even death, sometimes emerge completely unscathed. Others, wrongfully accused, find their lives unalterably changed by the unprovoked evil that has overtaken them.

Tey structures her novels like the conventional mysteries they seem to be: there are motives to discover, clues to follow, alibis to check, and conclusions to draw. In the end, logic (sometimes assisted by Providence) unravels the mystery; but questions linger: How can an adolescent from a good family murder his twin in cold blood and feel no remorse (Brat Farrar, 1949)? What defense does an unconventional woman have against...