The Singing Sands

Josephine Tey

Jun 2011 · Random House

About this ebook

On his train back to Scotland for a well-earned rest, Inspector Grant learns that a fellow passenger, one Charles Martin, has been found dead. It looks like a case of misadventure - but Grant is not so sure. Teased by some enigmatic lines of verse that the deceased had apparently scrawled on a newspaper, he follows a trail to the remote Outer Hebrides.

And though it is the end of his holiday, it is also the beginning of an intriguing investigation into the bizarre circumstances shrouding Charles Martin's death...

Ratings and reviews

Poor old Inspector Alan Grant, in the last book he was hospitalised after a nasty fall and now he's on sick leave because of his nerves/overwork which has given him claustrophobia. He is on his way to the Highlands of Scotland to stay with a cousin and her family on the night train, but as he makes to depart the train, he comes across the train guard trying to wake a passenger who is clearly dead.What follows is an engaging piece of detection, although not in the same class as Daughter of Time.

A perfect crime, but only revealed in the last few chapters. The story itself is slow and tedious, very hard work for someone like myself to engage in as I'm much more at home reading crime stories with fast flowing action throughout. It was only that my wife had bought this book on Google Play that I managed to stay the course. Many times during the read I was tempted to abandon this, but amazingly I finished it - Now I'm going to find something much more suitable for me to read!

Inspector Grant suffering from burnout goes to Scotland for the fishing but the discovery of a dead man on the train leads him on an investigation which helps him to heal. Josephine Tey at her best.

About the author

Josephine Tey is one of the best-known and best-loved of all crime writers. She began to write full-time after the successful publication of her first novel, The Man in the Queue (1929), which introduced Inspector Grant of Scotland Yard. In 1937 she returned to crime writing with A Shilling for Candles, but it wasn't until after the Second World War that the majority of her crime novels were published. Josephine Tey died in 1952, leaving her entire estate to the National Trust.