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I agree with a lot of what’s been said, both positive and negative. I found the book engaging, and I’d give the book 3.5. In school, history was ‘dead kings, despots and wars’, so I tuned out. But Tey sparked my interest, and I spent more hours looking up English history than I did reading the actual book.
But I do agree with gmw that Grant is very poor investigator! I kept reminding myself that Tey didn’t have the internet at her fingertips. But Grant seemed like an apologist for her position, than a trained investigator. His language is loaded with positive adjectives for everything Richard, and pejorative for the opposing side. And Carradine omits the evidence that goes against Richard.
Like CRussel, I try to take sexist language with a grain of salt. I think it’s inevitable that some of the sexism, racism and classism of the day will creep into older books.
But I’m not sure it crept in here. I thought Tey deliberately used sexist language to portray Grant as a hardened police office. But the descriptions of the nurses felt clumsy and overdone, so it wasn’t very believable - more like a stereotype than a person.
And it wasn’t consistent with Grant’s character anyway. His housekeeper, cousin and friend wouldn’t all be so fond of him, if he was really that dismissive of women as people. So I think she does Grant a disservice with the language.
Sorry for the long ramble. It was interesting, with some flaws. I bought the other Grant novels, but am hoping Tey will let Grant be more objective when he’s investigating crime, and she’s less personally invested in the outcome.
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