Kribu

This is one of those cases again when I can't quite decide how many stars to give... so it's above 4, but not quite 5, mostly because I only seem to give 5 stars these days to the rare books I get fannishly obsessed about.

I'd been hearing about Josephine Tey for a while now, but this is the first book by her that I've read, and I found it quite excellent. Not so much as a mystery, perhaps, but I rather think this wasn't the main purpose of this particular book - it was so much more a study of character, and people, and what makes people do the things that people do, and it was really excellent at that, especially with the way we, the readers, weren't told what is right and what is wrong, but were left to make up our own minds.

Lovely writing, too, and I was drawn into the world of this story, much like the titular Miss Pym was. The very English English of this period never fails to make me smile, and I enjoyed the characterisations a lot - what some authors would need many books for, Tey achieved in a few chapters here, creating a cast of characters that were almost all strong and interesting in their own ways.

I think I'll be wanting to read more of Tey after this.