Her originality of thought, her dialogue, her characters, her subtlety. There is one exception, however: Josephine Tey. It looks as though Brat is going to be able to pull off the deception until old secrets emerge that put not only his plan but also his life in danger.įor the most part, Golden Age mystery writers leave me cold. Brat has been carefully and expertly coached in all things Patrick, and he's so successful that he's welcomed back into the Ashby family.
Patrick is, in fact, an orphan named Brat Farrar who has an uncanny resemblance to Simon. Patrick, who was presumed dead by suicide at the age of thirteen.
But then his older twin brother Patrick comes home. On the eve of his twenty-first birthday, Simon Ashby is poised to inherit Latchetts, a very profitable horse farm in the south of England. I wouldn’t hesitate to read another Tey in the future. There is a quaintness in the settings and the way of life that is more appealing. I seem to enjoy the older mysteries more than the newer ones. I loved the character development and was more interested in how Brat would solve the emotional dilemma of revealing the truth and not losing the love of the family he has found. Part of the mystery was pretty easy to solve for me, but no matter, the book was still fun. Of course, the intrigue begins as we watch this man find his place in the family, as we wonder if he might truly be Patrick, and if not, who is he and how has he come to have the face of an Ashby? The stranger, who has gone by the name of Brat Farrar, has led a life of adventure and has come home just in time to assume his inheritance. His twin, Simon, will turn twenty-one soon and inherit the family estate at Lachetts in Patrick’s stead.Įnter a stranger who looks too much like Simon to be ignored and claiming to be Patrick, not a suicide, just a run away. A body washed up downstream from his home, but unrecognizable, was assumed to be his and buried. Patrick Ashby is meant to have committed suicide when he was thirteen years old.
( )Ī lovely little interlude from heavy reading, this early mystery was reminiscent of one of my favorite Daphne du Maurier novels, The Scapegoat. The key elements of the plot seemed transparent to me early on, so I enjoyed this as a relaxing read, full of detailed descriptions of a horse breeding and racing household in post-WWII England. Where is a very clever mental exercise, is a clever tale of a scam that encounters unanticipated wrinkles. I found to be similar to, not just in Tey's writing style, but also in that they aren't straightforward crime novels.
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