Josephine Tey was a pseudonym of Elizabeth Mackintosh (July 25, 1896 - February 13, 1952), a Scottish author best known for her mystery novels. She also wrote under the name of Gordon Daviot.
Tey was born in Inverness, She studied at Anstey Physical Training College in Birmingham and became a physical education instructor. Miss Pym Disposes was set in a similar institution, and her background gave Tey a knowledge of medical matters that served her well. However, her literary career began only when she was forced to give up regular work in order to care for her invalid father.
Six of her mystery novels feature Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant; the best-known is The Daughter of Time. In this book Grant, hospitalised after a violent arrest, works via reference books on the so-called mystery of whether King Richard III of England murdered his nephews, the Princes in the Tower. As Gordon Daviot she also wrote about Richard III, in Richard of Bordeaux. Grant is an irritatingly handsome and upper-crust detective in the style of Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn:
Some years before, Grant had inherited a considerable legacy -- a legacy sufficient to permit him to retire into idle nonentity if such had been his desire. But Grant loved his work even when he swore and called it a dog's life, and the legacy had been used only to smooth and embroider life. . . . It was owing entirely to the legacy, therefore, that Grant was an habitué of so exclusive an eating-place in London as Laurent's, and -- a much more astonishing and impressive fact -- a pet of the head waiter's. Only five persons in Europe are pets of Laurent's head waiter, and Grant was thoroughly conscious of the honor, and thoroughly sensible of the reason. -- Josephine Tey
Josephine Tey's books are available for download from Gutenberg Australia
Bibliography
The Man in the Queue aka Killer in the Crowd (1929)
A Shilling for Candles (1936)
Miss Pym Disposes (1946)
The Franchise Affair (1948)
Brat Farrar aka Come and Kill Me (1949)
To Love and Be Wise (1950)
The Daughter of Time (1951)
The Singing Sands (1952)