The Franchise Affair: An Inspector Alan Grant Mystery by Josephine TeyMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Well, what a peculiar novel. How this can be billed as an Inspector Grant mystery when he barely appears in the book and definitely has no hand in solving the mystery I cannot imagine!
Robert Blair is a comfortable forty-year old solicitor in the small town of Milford. He is senior partner in his family's law firm and his life is totally predictable. Until recently he was very happy with his life but just lately he feels a mild concern that this is all there is. Late one afternoon, just as he is about to leave he gets a call from Miss Marion Sharpe, a relative newcomer to Milford, requesting his assistance. Initially believing it to be a traffic summons (something he does not deal with as a general rule), he is intrigued when she tells him that Scotland Yard are accusing her and her widowed mother of imprisoning and beating a fifteen year old girl, trying to force her to become their maid.
The girl, Betty Kane, presents very well, she describes the house and its contents very well and identifies the room she says she was locked in for a month before she managed to escape. Her story is very plausible and she seems a credible child. However, much of her descriptions would fit any large house and the police initially decide not to take any further action. However, Betty's brother is incensed and tells her story to a sensationalist newspaper which then prints pages and pages of accusations against Marion and her mother and the incompetence of the police. The inflammatory article grabs the attention of the public and they start to visit Franchise House in their bus-loads, shouting abuse, and defacing the property. Robert realises that he must discover the truth of where Betty really was for the month she was missing, otherwise Marion and her mother will be hounded for the rest of their lives.
This was a good detective story. However, the amount of vitriol that was spouted about various women in this book was distasteful. There was sneering about a farm labourer's daughter's clothes and her implausibly white teeth. Marion on several occasions tells Robert she wants to punch and generally beat up Betty, indeed there was some comment to the effect that she was someone who should get used to be punched a lot. Bettys mother was similarly portrayed as a monster, Robert's kindly Aunt Lin was painted as a religious dimwit, etc, etc.
Also, it was interesting that some of the quack notions attributed to the Archbishop are now the way we think about things, eg that the Irish were oppressed by the British (there were better examples but I can't think of them now).
As with the previous novels, there is a lot of casual racism, this time about the Irish - but it is of its time.
One other thing, I find it difficult to know precisely when these books are set. I thought the first book was set after WW1 because it was published in 1929 but I suspect the later books may be set after WW2, although Inspector Grant appears not to have aged.
Anyway, I have just started the next book and Inspector Grant is front-and-centre so all is good with the world.
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