During the golden age of detective fiction in the early 20th century, four writers influenced the genre (体裁) most: Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers and the "Queen of Crime", Agatha Christie. Another novelist of this era was Josephine Tey, ranked as "number Five to the Big Four", whose detective books are all thick with mystery and show a great mind at work.
The Franchise Affair
It was published in 1948 and adapted into a film three years later, which begins with a missing teenager. When she turns up again, distressed (痛苦的) and exhausted, she explains how she got away from a mother and daughter who locked her up and tried to make a servant of her. The girl's version of events ruins their reputations, which then begins to fall apart.
To Love and Be Wise
It centers around another disappearance. Leslie Searle, a Hollywood photographer, disappears from an English village that is home to many writers and artists. Grant, a detective of Scotland Yard, arrives to determine whether a crime has been committed.
The Daughter of Time
As Tey's masterpiece, the book was once voted the greatest crime novel ever written by the Crime Writers Association. This time, Grant is out of action, recovering from a broken leg. To relieve his boredom, he turns his attention to a very cold case, concerning Richard III. Did Richard III really murder his two nephews in the Tower of London?
Richard of Bordeaux
MacKintosh also established her literary status by her first play, Richard of Bordeaux, under the name Gordon Daviot. However, it is as Tey, and for her detective novels, that she is remembered today. Her books are still of great value to contemporary literature because of their keen psychological insight into the complexity of human nature.
