Nine Lessons (Josephine Tey Series) - Softcover

Upson, Nicola

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571324789 ISBN 13: 9780571324781

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2018

Synopsis

Chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Books of 2017
Longlisted for the 2019 New Angle Prize for Literature

Josephine Tey is in Cambridge, a town gripped by fear and suspicion as a serial rapist stalks the streets, and in the shadow of King's College Chapel, Detective Chief Inspector Archie Penrose faces some of the most horrific and audacious murders of his career.

The seventh novel in Nicola Upson's highly praised series featuring Josephine Tey takes the reader on a journey from 1930s Cambridge to the bleak and desolate Suffolk coast - a journey which will ultimately leave Archie's and Josephine's lives changed forever.

About this title

Review:

It takes pluck for a crime writer to put an illustrious predecessor at the centre of her novels. But in choosing to invent an afterlife for real-life author Josephine Tey, one of the crime-writing golden age greats, Nicola Upson rises to the challenge.

Nine Lessons is not for the faint-hearted. Moments of horror make it hard to keep to the page. But with its underlying theme of good intentions having tragic consequences, the story is strong enough to carry us through to a dramatic finale.

If Josephine Tey were alive, she would be the first to welcome a major talent.

Author: Barry Turner Source: Daily Mail

Upson expertly pulls off the gothic strands to inject a growing sense of menace and fear...The atmosphere is brilliantly created with the political climate overshadowed by the spread of fascism, the echoes of the abdication of the king the year before, (Penrose guarded Wallis Simpson in Suffolk while she waited for her divorce), and the menacing approach of another world war. Source: Crime Fiction Lover

A superior crime novel, with Upson perceptive on the place of women in unenlightened 1930s England. Source: Financial Times

Upson's novels are always wonderfully evocative of the time period in which they are set . . . Perfect for lovers of classic crime with a contemporary twist. Source: Shiny New Books

'Nine Lessons is not for the faint-hearted. Upson's subtle hand juxtaposes an elegantly descriptive narrative with a thrilling thread of simmering menace, dark, disturbing plot lines and grisly murders that will make your blood run cold. Josephine and the immensely likeable Archie face very personal dilemmas in this gripping, haunting mystery which needs no reference to earlier Josephine Tey novels but is so clever and compelling that satisfied customers will be eager to seek out and devour all the back titles.' Author: Pam Norfolk Source: Lancashire Post

'Even without knowledge of the first six books in the series, it is clear that Upson has taken the air of mystery that surrounds Tey's private life and blended it smoothly with the few facts available to create a plausible and complex heroine. The blanks of Tey's life - friends, lovers etc- are filled in with fiction but it's plausible fiction and I felt like the woman coming across in 'Nine Lessons' really could be the woman who wrote the golden age classics that I've so enjoyed. Upson's Tey comes across as clever, passionate and sensitive. [...] Overall this was a cleverly plotted, compelling mystery novel.' Source: The Shelf of Unread Books

intelligent and well crafted Author: Fanny Blake Source: Woman & Home

Book Description:

In the years before the Great War, M.R. James told ghost stories by candlelight to a handful of friends and scholars. Now, twenty-five years later, those men are dying, killed off one by one...

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0571324789
• ISBN 13: 9780571324781
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320