The name ‘Josephine Tey’ keeps popping up in my life. This time it was while listening to the podcast Backlisted, where they discussed Miss Pym Disposes. If you are at all familiar with her name, it’s probably due to her most popular novel [b:The Daughter of Time|77661|The Daughter of Time (Inspector Alan Grant, #5)|Josephine Tey|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1394326949l/77661.SY75.jpg|3222080] which is a detective novel, in the truest sense. Miss Pym Disposes is less a mystery novel, and more a study of young women and what happens when they are isolated from the rest of society (in this case boarding at the Leys Physical Training College) and put under immense pressure to succeed.

The titular Miss Lucy Pym has unexpectedly become famous for writing a pop psychology book and is invited by an old school chum who is now the Principal of Leys College to give a lecture there. Before she knows it, she finds herself enmeshed in this foreign world of bells and tradition and the subtle cruelty only girls can inflict. After a comment made by the unpopular student Rouse, ‘their eyes went to her, and came away again, expressionlessly. No one commented on what she had said. Their indifference left her marooned in the moment’.

This is a book of its time. Written in 1946, there are some references that are now lost in said time, but I found this didn’t detract from the enjoyment at all. It’s also very English. The tone, the many references to English traditions and traits: ‘As always, the English were moved by a gallant failure where an easy success left them merely polite’. And the unmistakable English landscape, described with unabashed affection:

She would go away deep into the green and white and yellow countryside, and smell the may and lie in the grass and feel the world turning on its axis, and remember that it was a very large world, and that College griefs were wild and bitter, but soon over, and that in the Scale of Things they were undeniably Very Small Beer.

What fun this was! I kept thinking of Rear Window: main character laid up with a broken leg; bored and looking for something to alleviate the tedium. Although there is no equivalent to the Grace Kelly character. After reading this tight little crime novel, I feel I must now investigate what the current stand is on who killed the princes in the tower. When I mentioned the plot in passing to a couple of people, the said “didn’t Richard III do it?”.
I would recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys a classic crime novel and/or English history. It would also be a good example for HSC crime genre.