The Franchise Affair: An Inspector Alan Grant Mystery

This is part of a series but the main protagonist of the series Inspector Grant hardly features in this story instead we have a solicitor Robert Blair of Blair, Hayward, and Bennet who takes on this mystery and sets about investigating the devastating accusation made against Mrs Sharpe and her daughter Marion.Robert receives a telephone call just as he is about to leave the office for the day and return home to the house he shares with his aunt Lin. It is Marion Sharpe who asks him to come immediately to The Franchise, where she lives with her mother, as someone from Scotland Yard along with a local officer are accusing them of kidnapping and beating a girl. Robert somewhat reluctantly, as he is not a criminal lawyer, agrees.Once Robert arrives he is told what the situation is. The mother and daughter are being investigated by Inspector Grant of ‘The Yard’ accompanying him is a local officer who Robert knows. Marion, who telephoned him, and her mother who later joins them agree to allow the teenage girl to come into their home. Betty Kane comes in accompanied by a female and confirms that the people who kidnapped her are indeed Marion and Mrs Sharpe. She is taken to the attic where she was supposed to have been held and beaten. Here she indicates what she saw and how she was treated. What she says is damming but is she telling the truth? Robert has his doubts and is sure that the Sharpe women have been falsely accused. Is he right?A well paced, well written story that has wonderful characters and an interesting plot which for those who don’t like the darker, gorier type of crime fiction is ideal. There is no murder, no graphic violence in the book and yet it is as gripping as any storyline.There are aspects of The Franchise Affair that situate it in a post-war England which still had the death penalty yet it deals with issues still relevant today. For example, the way in which the media, particularly the ‘Ack-Emma’, sensationalised what happened and manipulated the facts raises issues today as it did then around media responsibility and accountability. There is also the way in which communities react to ‘outsiders’ (or ‘incomers’) and take ‘justice’ into their own hands that are as pertinent in 2023 as they were in 1948.I very much enjoyed reading The Franchise Affair and will read more of Josephine Tey’s work in the future. If you choose to read it I hope you find it just as good. In my copy of The Franchise Affair there is a very interesting forward that I recommend you read after the book as it does ‘give the game away’ and may spoil your enjoyment of the story. If you already have read it what did you think about it?The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey was the chosen book for our first read of 2023, taking place on 9 January. We meet online.

A cracking good read!

much more a literature piece than a crime or thriller story.

A very good mystery thriller, well worth keeping in your library to read again.

I read voraciously. I enjoy many genres - historical, psychological thrillers, whodunnits, fantasy, sci-fi, (ok, not really romance or chick-lit). Whilst I read a lot of current mystery/cop fiction I also love the between-the-wars crime stories by the likes of Patricia Wentworth, Georgette Heyer, and Moray Dalton (I like the more plodding pace - no mad car chase, shoot ups etc - the forensic limitations on the police and the investigators, the social norms and attitudes which frustrate at every turn). The Franchise Affair is the first Josephine Tey I have read, and by goodness, it's a marvel! It has all the elements of the other writers I have mentioned, but infinitely more so. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a new book so much; on one hand I was desperate to finish it and Find Out All (well, more like Find Out Will They Get The Evidence They Need); on the other hand I didn't want the story to end. All the characters were gorgeously written, and the situations, whilst the story would never pan out this way had it been set in current times, seemed very believable. Actually, at times I found it quite amusing to imagine the latest scene playing out as though it WAS set today!Yes, it's sexist and so on, but it reflects the era in which it was written.I loved it. I will be buying up the rest of Ms Tey's work.

I have read this book at least 10 times and I never fail to enjoy it.

This is a classic crime novel written in around 1950 which is distinctive in a number of ways. There is no murder or dead bodies. The main character is unmarried at 40 but no hint of gayness. The main protagonist is a local solicitor in a sleepy midlands village after the Second World War. There is a nice background of austerity Britain with plenty of references to food which was an obsession at the time. A more realistic portrait than say St Mary Mead of Agatha Christie. This is really a novel with a criminal background and the characters are well drawn. There are one or two issues. What did the lawyers do during the War?All in all better than I had thought it would be and ai enjoyed it

I enjoyed this. An intriguing story which certainly held my interest. It was written in the late 1940s, when society was very different. The snobbishness and the demonisation of a fifteen or sixteen year old girl seem extraordinary in the twenty-first century. However, I think I have read this before, some forty years ago, and I can’t remember noticing such things particularly then. So enjoy it as “of its time” and consider which attitudes prevalent today will seem equally strange after seventy years!