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Novel that charms, till the dagger strikes The fourth in the series, Fear in the Sunlight, finds Tey
at odds with two more real-life merchants of murder: Alfred Hitchcock and his
wife Alma. Hitchcock invites Tey to a weekend party in the Welsh coastal
village of Portmeirion in the summer of 1936, to negotiate the rights to her
novel A Shilling for Candles. Also present are a cast of matinee idols,
starlets, bitter hotel staff and ambitious studio crew. Each has a forced
perspective to rival the architectural oddities peppering the hamlet. When one
of the guests is found slashed to death there are more suspects circling than
seagulls. The Thirties calm, with the hangover of the Great War still
lingering and the storm clouds gathering once again, makes for a portentous
period for a murder story. "Normal is one of the casualties of our
generation," declares Josephine. And what better setting than Sir Clough
Williams-Ellis's wondrous folly: a village of varyingly scaled cottages, bell
towers and villas built in the style of Portofino. While its Mediterranean
hues, winding alleys and carefully curated vistas were made famous as the
backdrop to the psychedelic series The Prisoner, Upson draws out a more
sedate atmosphere of prewar sanctuary, a bolt hole for creative types to kick
back with a gin and tonic. Upson conjures up Hitchcock's dark genius
beautifully. Consider his musings as he sits on his balcony: "The tide
goes out so quickly once it starts. Imagine the water receding to reveal a
body lying on the beach, a woman in a swimming costume, her white bathing cap
picked out in the sun. There's a belt next to her, curling snakelike in the
sand as the last of the water drains away — and we know immediately that
it's been used to strangle her. "It's vintage, bombastic, visually
arresting Hitch." Upson has researched her heroine, anti-hero, cameo
parts, and stage with aplomb to create a novel that charms until the dagger
strikes and then, as Hitchcock once explained, it provides the public with
beneficial shocks. —The Independent
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Nicola Upson's Josephine Tey
mysteries are a class above the usual crime fiction. They shimmer with a love
for their prewar setting and the artistic circles Tey, a real-life detective
novelist, frequented. Her choice of sleuth was a masterstroke of literary
theft: Tey was a shadowy, stubbornly private writer. Like Georgette Heyer, she
shunned the celebrity trappings enjoyed by their contemporary, Agatha
Christie. As a result she was ripe for imaginative speculation, of which Upson
has plenty. 