brother Simon is on the verge of turning 21 and inheriting a fortune, Brat Farrar shows up. It has an entertaining mystery and characters you are left thinking about long after finishing the book. Her first short fiction was published in the English Review. “Brat Farrar” is an excellent mix of tightly-written plot and interesting characters against the beautifully evoked backdrop of the English countryside. Josephine Tey doesn’t shy away from showing character flaws, though, English snobbery and a sense of entitlement a part of this novel and others. This romantic image of England was often a part of crime fiction of the time, also used to great effect by such writers as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. She was just beginning to make a life for herself in England when she was called back to Inverness to look after her widowed father and remained living there for the rest of her life. Eights years ago the children lost their parents in a plane crash.

It paints a slightly nostalgic, romantic view of middle-class English life common in a number of Josephine Tey’s books, which might well be explained by the author’s working-class Scottish background. Summary of the plot : The Ashby family lives at Latchetts. This is a fast-paced psychological mystery novel with well-rounded characters. The title character is a young man convinced to impersonate Patrick Ashby, the heir to the Latchetts estate, and Brat is increasingly caught up in trying to discover what really happened to Patrick, with deadly consequences. “ Brat Farrar” is a book I loved as a teenager so re-reading it is always like a home-coming.

Brat farrar book summary