Josephine Tey’s crime capers probed the dark side of human nature

During the golden age of detective fiction in the early 20th century, four writers dominated the genre: Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers and the “queen of crime” herself, Agatha Christie. Another novelist of this era was Josephine Tey—ranked by her biographer, Jennifer Morag Henderson, as “number Five to the Big Four”. In 1929-52 Tey (the pen name of Elizabeth MacKintosh) published a series of six meticulously crafted detective novels. “I had no intention of writing one”, she said, “but one night an idea struck with such force that it hurt.”