Josephine Tey returns as a character drawn by Nicola Upson

Born in Inverness in 1896, Josephine Tey entered the world as Elizabeth Mackintosh. After a brief career as a physical education teacher, she turned to writing. As Gordon Daviot, she wrote plays for the London theatre, most notably, Richard of Bordeaux. Staged in 1933, this drama put her in the spotlight and catapulted John Gielgud to stardom.

Josephine Tey was the name under which "Bess" penned her mystery novels. These featured an entirely new sort of detective, Alan Grant. Tey's work broadened the mystery genre "opening doors," as Val McDermid puts it, "for others to walk through." Tey died in 1952, but Nicola Upson revived her, publishing the first of her Josephine Tey Mystery series in 2008. Set in the theatre world of thirties London, it features the novelist as a character.

The Josephine Tey character admits to writing her first mystery novel on a bet and dedicating it to her typewriter. She also uses some qualities of her policeman friend Inspector Penrose as a model for her dapper fictional detective, Alan Grant. Novelist Upson works in a cameo of the redoubtable and very real forensic pathologist, Sir Bernard Spilsbury. The Guardian has dubbed him "the highly controversial founder of crime scene investigation (CSI) in Britain."

Intricately plotted and written in a similar style to Tey's well-known contemporary mystery writers of the time, Upson's first Josephine Tey Mystery also delves deep into its characters and expresses universal themes, portraying in particular, the damage done by war -- not only to those who fight it, but to the generations that follow.