Review: To Love and Be Wise: An Inspector Alan Grant Mystery

To Love and Be Wise: An Inspector Alan Grant Mystery by Josephine Tey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well that didn't go the way I was expecting. After the last book which barely featured Inspector Grant I hoped that this one would feature him a bit more. And it did at first.

Inspector Grant goes to a noisy literary party to meet his friend, the actress Marta Hallard. Whilst there he sees an extraordinarily attractive young man loitering on the outskirts looking a little lost and introduces him to their hostess the author Lavinia Finch as the young man, Leslie Searle, is looking for her nephew Walter Whitmore, a famous radio broadcaster. In the way of the fabulously wealthy, Lavinia invites Leslie to spend the weekend at her country pile in Orfordshire (Oxfordshire?) to meet Walter, since they apparently share a mutual friend. After Lavinia bought her gothic monstrosity she sparked a bit of an exodus such that the small village houses any number of artistic types, including Marta, a dancer, a playwright, and a writer.

Leslie is a famous American photographer, spending half the year photographing celebrities on the West Coast and the rest of the year photographing nature. His presence in the small village acts as a catalyst, despite impeccable manners he seems to be a catalyst, causing dissent and discontent wherever he goes. Despite his growing concern that Leslie is becoming too close to his fiance, Walter agrees to co-author a travel book with Leslie, but partway through their journey Leslie disappears after a spat with Walter in the local pub. Has Leslie left of his own accord? Did he fall into the river on his way home? Was he pushed? Given the delicate nature of the investigations and the celebrities, the local police call in Scotland Yard and Inspector Grant finds himself looking for a missing person. But throughout the investigation Alan can't help but feel like he's being shown a game of smoke and mirrors.

After the first third of the book where Inspector Grant is mainly conspicuous by his absence, although the reader does get treated to motives for all of the key players to want to kill Leslie, once Alan is called in we are treated to his usual methodical investigation with the occasional flash of inspiration (or gut feeling). As I suspected in one of the earlier books, Alan comes from some wealth and has inherited enough to never have to work again, which perhaps explains how he hobnobs with actresses and meets the aristocracy on equal terms.

As with all the previous mysteries, I feel that there are lots of things which the reader doesn't see/hear which help to uncover the truth, very much of the fantastical Sherlock Holmes type of investigation rather than showing the reader all the clues so that they *could* guess the truth.

I think I'm going to give myself a break, a palate cleanser if you will, before starting what has been described as the greatest crime novel of all time - at this moment I remain sceptical.

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