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London Rain
May, 1937. Josephine Tey is in London to oversee a BBC radio production of her play, Queen of Scots. Meanwhile, the country is preparing to crown a new king.
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May, 1937. Josephine Tey is in London to oversee a BBC radio production of her play, Queen of Scots. Meanwhile, the country is preparing to crown a new king.
At the height of the Coronation celebrations, Detective Chief Inspector Archie Penrose is called in to investigate the murder of one of the BBC’s best-known broadcasters. A second victim – his mistress, and the play’s leading actress – suggests that the motive lies close to home, but Josephine suspects that the killings are linked to a decade-old scandal.
With Archie’s hands tied by politics, and his attention taken by another, seemingly unrelated death, it is left to Josephine to get to the truth – and to confront at first-hand the deadly consequences of love, deceit and betrayal.
'Nicola Upson's novels featuring the Golden Age crime writer Josephine Tey are always a delight.'
It was a moment of ground-breaking inspiration when Nicola Upson settled on Josephine Tey, one of the finest writers of classic detective fiction, as the heroine of her mystery novels...In giving Tey a role as a mystery-solver as well as a creator, Upson fills out her personality with a gay romance, sensitively portrayed, and a platonic relationship with a rising star of Scotland Yard...London Rain is the sixth novel in a series which still has a long way to run.
Upson's London is evocative and there is enough insight into the characters' inner workings to satisfy readers uninterested in superficial crime fiction.
'I am a newcomer to the world of Upson and Tey, but never felt at a disadvantage here. The tale is liberally peppered with back story which will bring you up to speed without hindering the narrative flow and I soon grew to know and like the main protagonists. But it is the historical context which I found most compelling, with a combination of real life and fiction that is subtly mixed and finely judged. I was truly transported back in time and although the sun was shining outside as I read this book, I almost felt like putting up an umbrella, so wet and well defined were the scenes.'
'Upson has clearly done her research painstakingly and the results are impressive. So -- another winner, which as you can see I enjoyed tremendously. ' -
Upson supplies lots of fascinating, carefully researched period detail and information, as fact and fiction are seamlessly combined.
Nicola Upson’s debut novel, An Expert in Murder, was the first in a series of crime novels whose main character is Josephine Tey, who – along with Agatha Christie – was one of the masters of Britain’s Golden Age of crime writing. She was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger in 2018 for Nine Lessons and longlisted in 2021 for…
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