The Franchise Affair

This isn't the most famous of Josephine Tey's mysteries, but it is perhaps the best. That's despite the fact that it is a mystery without a murder. Instead, the question is the truthfulness of a young girl, who swears that she was abducted by two women living in a lonely house, who kept her prisoner for three weeks until she was able to escape. The reader tends to doubt this, since we follow the story from the perspective of the lawyer for the two women, who is convinced of their innocence. But if Betty Kane wasn't being held prisoner, where was she? The mystery is engrossing, the characters interesting and convincing, and the writing delightful.

It should be noted that Ms. Tey's writing may offend some readers, indeed it has clearly show more offended at least one Amazon reviewer, who cites it as sexist and classist. It is, from the perspective of 2017 -- Ms. Tey clearly preferred the upper classes to the "lower orders", and some of the comments about Betty Kane are sexist. But this brings us to the issue of presentism: these books were written in the 1950's, when such attitudes were very widespread. That doesn't make them right, but it does (for me at least) make it possible to ignore the attitudes I dislike, and read the book for the mystery and the characterization. Presentism does spoil some books for me -- Evelyn Waugh, for example -- but not Josephine Tey. show less

'The Franchise Affair' is now my favourite Josephine Tey novel. I loved the writing, the originality of the story and the deep insights into characters who all came to feel real to me.

The story is deeply embedded in the culture of rural England as it was a few years after the end of World War II, yet the novel felt modern and fresh.

The quality of the prose pulled me into the story from the first page. Tey effortlessly captured the character of a small English Market Town that has recently been through some hard times but whose inhabitants have never doubted that they would muddle through somehow.

The story is told mostly through the eyes of Robert Blair, a respected local solicitor leading a long-established firm. He is a nice but show more habitually dull man who is content, in his forties to have an unchallenging, unchanging professional life. He has never married. His household is maintained by his aunt. His life is one of pleasant, unvarying routine. He is a man who blends so well with his environment that he seems to embody the decent but complacent, slightly stagnant spirit of the town. Then, an unexpected phone call at the end of an ordinary day drops him down the rabbit hole that will become known to the public as The Franchise Affair. What follows disrupts his routine and robs him of his equilibrium. It tests his values and requires him to choose a side and take a risk.

Despite what is implied by the publisher's synopsis, 'The Franchise Affair' is not a thriller or a detective story. It is a beautifully written, civilised, empathetic account of the consequences of vicious lies aimed at the vulnerable.

It isn't a novel where the main challenge is to decide whether or not the alleged kidnapping happened but rather one that asks the reader to consider what a decent man should do when faced with uncertainty, doubt and risk.

'The Franchise Affair' is, nevertheless, a lively book. There are dramatic courtroom scenes. There are instances of violence and vandalism prompted by hate and malice arising from the charged atmosphere around the accusations made against the two women who live at The Franchise. There are vitriolic letters in the gutter press that closely resemble the hate spewed out by keyboard warriors on social media today. Hate, it seems, is immutable. There are also instances of kindness and protection prompted by people whose values insist on decent behaviour. values that req people should be treated decently.

I became completely engaged with the people in the book. I was more concerned with them and what they were going through than with whether or not the kidnapping had happened or even whether or not the women would be found guilty. The plot kept my interest but the people captured my emotions.

I recommend the audiobook version of 'The Franchise Affair'. Carole Boyd's narration perfectly captured the tone of the prose and helped bring the characters to life. show less

The Franchise Affair - Tey
Audio performance by Caroline Boyd
4.5 stars

Josephine Tey was one of the Queens of 20th century British mystery. Not nearly as prolific as Agatha Christie, but just as captivating. This book is listed as the third book in the Inspector Alan Grant series, but that is hardly accurate. Grant has little more than a cameo role in this story. The true hero is unlikely, a stodgy solicitor named Robert Blair.

The Franchise is an isolated house, occupied by two single women, Miss Sharpe and her mother. These women are strangers to the nearest village, newcomers who are perceived as being very odd. When they are accused of the kidnap, imprisonment, and physical abuse of a young girl, they are convicted without trial in show more the opinion of the surrounding community and the gutter press. It becomes Robert Blair’s job to prepare their defense and to discredit their accuser.

Recently, I’ve been frustrated with the abrupt endings of the mysteries that I’ve been reading. I’ve been wanting to follow the bad guys to the courtroom, to watch the presentation of evidence and to see justice done. This book provided all of that. It was so satisfying to watch all the lies come apart in public.

I enjoyed the characters in this book. I didn’t agree with some of the mid-20th century attitudes concerning the hereditary nature of the criminal mind. Tey’s upper middle class characters seemed to support the nature side of the nature/nurture debate. There was little action in this book, but a great deal of cerebral tension. The writing reminded me of Daphne DuMaurier.

Carole Boyd gave an excellent performance. I also enjoyed her reading of Tey’s Brat Farrar. show less

Well written, at the phrase and sentence level, and opens intriguingly, but becomes an unpleasant read as the pages go on. It has the usual irritants of the Golden Age - class snobbery, sexism, the desperate conservatism of a passing social world - to an irksome degree.

A teenage girl claims that two women, vulnerable outsiders in the local community, abducted and beat her. The hero-detective is convinced that the women are innocent, that the girl is a liar and, furthermore, that the girl is a fast little trollop, using the abduction story as cover for some indiscretion of her own. And so it proves. There are no twists. No errors in judgement. Just Good Middle-class Woman vs. Lying Little Trollop.

Lavishly mixed in are swipes at the kind show more of beyond-caricatured bleeding-heart liberals who exist only in the mind of tabloid columnists. Plus the cosiest affirmation of eugenics I've so far seen in a post-war novel. show less

This is a many-times reread, one of my favorites of Tey's mysteries. It's technically part of the Alan Grant series - he's certainly here, but he's not the protagonist nor do we ever get a glimpse inside his head. I actually wonder what happened, because Grant is usually really good at seeing holes in the obvious story - and here, he doesn't even catch Rose and her friend as unreliable witnesses. That's up to the protagonist, Robert Blair. Nicely twisty story, with a very interesting and constantly expanding cast of characters. And when the mystery is solved, there's a lovely postscript - callback to the first scene in the book, and a possible much happier ending. Or at least more interesting (for the characters - it's plenty show more interesting for the reader!). show less

In sum: dated. At the same time, well-plotted and written. Two not well-off upper-middle class women, mother and daughter, living in an ugly isolated house they inherited are accused, out of the blue, of having held a young girl captive in their attic. The girl is very sweet and pretty on the surface and sympathy goes to her, plus she describes the house's inside with damning accuracy. One of the women asks the local lawyer, Robert Blair, who works mainly in estate not criminal law, to help them. To his surprise he is not only fully on their side, but enjoys the task immensely. I've read other Tey at other times, but this was the first one that set my back as so permeated with class and random prejudicesd and beefs that seem nonsensical show more to me to to the ignorance of bleeding heart liberals (in my view most extremes at either end exhibit this lack), that most women can't think analytically, or that people with a certain kind of blue eyes set wide apart can't be trusted, and a host of other oddities that grated. It did make me ponder aspects of the origins and audience of the detective genre -- upper middle class, well-educated, enjoying the leisure to untangle a mental puzzle, but also to enjoy having their own class and values affirmed in the process. Of course too, I'm one to talk, as generally, I gain indecent enjoyment of british cosy
mysteries. Some writers quietly poke fun at bias and themselves and everyone but I didn't feel that here. This went a few paces too far into social smuggery for me. ***1/2 show less

Ho-hum, another book and author I had never heard of before LT. I honestly can’t remember what kind of books I read BLT (Before LT) but since 2009 I’ve discovered a boatload of really, really good books by people I never heard of yet were well-known and very highly regarded in their time. Josephine Tey joins a long line of such authors. She has been called one of the best (maybe THE best) mystery writers of all time and if The Franchise Affair is any indication, I can see why.

Robert Blair was about to call it a day at his prestigious law firm when the phone rang. On the other end was Marion Sharpe who, along with her mother, resided at the fairly run down country house known as the Franchise. It seems she and her mother were in a show more fair amount of trouble and even though Blair’s firm handled mostly wills and estates and had never had a criminal case in all their years of existence, Robert agreed to help the women out. They were being accused of abducting, beating and holding a young girl, Betty Kane, prisoner in their home. He was startled to discover, as was Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant, that even though the women claimed that the girl had never been in their home, she knew an awful lot about the house in general and the attic room where she was supposedly held, in particular. Yet there’s something about Kane’s story that just doesn’t seem right to solicitor Blair, and he settles in to investigate an unbelievable mystery. The fact that Tey reached back into history where a crime very much like this took place makes it all the more unbelievable.

Tey’s prose is smooth and delightful and moves the narrative along at breakneck speed. The book was first published in 1948 and I expected it to be dated but saw no evidence of that at all. Her deft touch produced many memorable moments and her sense of humor shined through on more than one occasion. The neighborhood where the Franchise is located might be described as sketchy and Marion Sharpe warns Blair that he can leave his car overnight:

”’Shouldn’t leave your car. Take it with you.’

‘But it’s quite a little way isn’t it?’

‘Maybe, but it’s Saturday.’

‘Saturday?’

‘School’s out.’

‘Oh, I see. But there’s nothing in it---‘ ‘to steal,’ he was going to say but amended it to ‘Nothing that’s movable.’

‘Movable! Huh! That’s good. We had window boxes once. Mrs. Laverty over the way had a gate. Mrs. Biddows had two fine wooden clothes posts and eighteen yards of clothes rope. They all thought they weren’t movable. You have your car there for ten minutes you’ll be lucky to find the chassis.’” (Page 109)

And what a stroke of luck that I have six more Tey mysteries to read. Very highly recommended. show less