The Singing Sands

by Josephine Tey

Overview

A “beautifully written and insistently readable” classic mystery from the Golden Age of crime fiction, with a new introduction by author Robert Barnard (New York Times).

On sick leave from Scotland Yard, Inspector Alan Grant is planning a quiet holiday with an old school chum to recover from overwork and mental fatigue. Traveling on the night train to Scotland, however, Grant stumbles upon a dead man and a cryptic poem about “the stones that walk” and “the singing sand,” which send him off on a fascinating search into the verse’s meaning and the identity of the deceased. Grant needs just this sort of casual inquiry to quiet his jangling nerves, despite his doctor’s orders. But what begins as a leisurely pastime eventually turns into a full-blown investigation that leads Grant to discover not only the key to the poem but the truth about a most diabolical murder.

“Josephine Tey has always been absolutely reliable in producing original and mysterious plots with interesting characters and unguessable endings.” —Spectator

“Really first class . . . a continual delight.” —Times Literary Supplement

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982148607
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	02/13/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	222
Sales rank:	6,875
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Josephine Tey was a a Scottish author best known for her mystery novels. She was born in Inverness, the daughter of Colin Mackintosh and Josephine (née Horne). In five of the mystery novels, the most famous is The Daughter of Time, in which Grant, laid up in hospital, has friends research reference books and contemporary documents so that he can puzzle out the mystery of whether King Richard III of England murdered his nephews, the Princes in the Tower. Grant comes to the firm conclusion that King Richard was totally innocent of the death of the Princes.

In 1990, The Daughter of Time was selected by the British-based Crime Writers' Association as the greatest mystery novel of all time; Her another one, The Franchise Affair was 11th on the same list of 100 books.

In 2012, Peter Hitchens wrote that, "Josephine Tey's clarity of mind, and her loathing of fakes and of propaganda, are like pure, cold spring water in a weary land", and what she loves above all is to show that things are very often not what they seem to be, that we are too easily fooled, that ready acceptance of conventional wisdom is not just dangerous, but a result of laziness, incuriosity and of a resistance to reason.

Editorial Reviews

Josephine Tey has always been absoluteely reliable in producing original and mysterious plots with interesting characters and unguessable endings.”
—Spectator

"Really first class... a continual delight."
— Times Literary Supplement

"Beautifully written and insistently readable."
— New York Times

From the Publisher