Locating and Vindicating Josephine Tey's Detective Fiction

This article analyses Josephine Tey's detective fiction. First, it locates her work within the Golden Age parameters, as outlined by its major critics, before focussing on two crucial aspects of genre fiction: the detective, and the case solution. Tey's novels certainly follow many standard conventions, but close scrutiny of these two key stylistic features reveal a writer often at odds with the classic tenets of a whodunit, in such aspects as its treatment of sexuality, and mistaken detection. The article concludes by suggesting that Tey's questioning, and arguably subversive stance, responds to the friction between her characters' private and public selves.