A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

What a weird little novel!

Tey is best-known for The Daughter of Time, in which her detective hero, Inspector Alan Grant, investigates the case of Richard III by reading history books while flat on his back in a hospital bed. Brat Farrar, an impersonation novel, is also quite good; and The Singing sands, starring Alan Grant again, is very atmospheric.

All of those have the feeling of traditional English murder mysteries, but not the basic "someone gets murdered in a country house" plot. Same with To Love and Be Wise, which was written in 1951: a time which overlaps with Agatha Christie, another classic English mystery writer.

Grant goes to a party, and spots a strikingly handsome young man, an American photographer named Leslie Searle. I cannot but read his policeman's observations as incredibly slashy:

Was it possible, Grant wondered, that those cheekbones were being wasted in a stockbroker's office? Or was it perhaps that the soft light of Messrs Ross and Cromarty's expensive lamps flattered that nice straight nose and the straight blonde hair and that the young man was less beautiful in the daylight?

Grant quickly drops out of the picture, and we follow Leslie Searle to a house in the country, where he is a guest, and where he proceeds to unsettle the entire village. He is devastatingly charismatic, all the women-- including his host's fiancee-- fall at least a little bit in love with him, and he gets in (verbal) fights with many of the men, who tend to find him extremely disturbing in a way they can't quite put their finger on. He is compared to Lucifer. And then he vanishes under suspicious circumstances. Re-enter Grant.

Massive spoilers below.
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I bought this at a library sale after making this comment on minnow1212's journal, regarding her post about a Tey mystery which I hadn't read, To Love and Be Wise, starring her usual detective Alan Grant:

"I also love The Daughter of Time. It begins with Grant flat on his back on a hospital, glumly staring at a stack of horrid books left by well-wishers. He proceeds to mentally demolish each one-- the depressing farm epic, the overly arch comedy of manners, the fluffy romance-- to pass the time.

I also like another Grant mystery, The Singing Sands. The mystery itself is forgettable, but the atmosphere is haunting."

The Daughter of Time is a classic, by the way: a mystery in which, like Rear Window, the detective is immobolized by an injury and must do all his detecting mentally and with the help of assistants. Moreover, the mystery which Grant is investigating is whether Richard III really murdered the princes in the tower. I've read it at least ten times despite not caring in the slightest whether or not he did.

Brat Farrar is not exactly a mystery, although my edition is packaged as one and it does involve an amateur detective investigating a murder. But it's really more of a straight novel with suspense elements, and the sort of plot which any writer would give a body part to write for the first time.

Brat Farrar grew up a foundling in an English orphanage. He ran away when he was young, stowed-away to America, broke horses, broke his leg and ended up lame, and drifted back to England. There a man he never met before called him by another man's name, then invited him out for lunch and a proposition. It seems that Brat is a dead ringer for Simon Ashby, a young man who is about to come of age and into his inheritance: a nice chunk of money and property, including a thriving stable.

Simon once had an older twin, Patrick, who would have inherited the lot if he hadn't jumped off a cliff and into the ocean in despair at their parents' sudden death. But Patrick's body was never found. Now a family friend wants Brat to impersonate Patrick, claim the estate, and provide the friend with a percentage of its revenues.

Lured by the promise of the horses which he loves and which his lame leg, lack of papers, and lack of money would otherwise cut him off from, Brat accepts. But his impersonation almost immediately becomes more than just a con game for money: Brat finds the family he never had, begins falling for a woman who thinks he's her long-lost brother, and begins to suspect that Patrick was murdered-- but can't do anything about it, even when he's certain who did it and why, without revealing his deception. Most intriguingly, Brat's personality begins to merge with that of the long-dead Patrick, as if Brat has spiritually as well as physically taken Patrick's place.

The end, alas, is rather too cheerful and also too bound by mystery conventions to encompass the deeper issues raised by the story. But it's a good read, even if it never quite lives up to its own premise.