Angel with Two Faces

Although I found this Golden Age mystery slow off the starting block, I came to greatly enjoy not only the plot, and the complicated, intricate characterizations, but the writing itself. Upson's main character, Josephine Tey, is a writer of mystery novels, a singular career for either gender in the early 1900's, but particularly so for a woman. In this as well as Upson's 3rd Josephine Tey novel, the characters within the mystery writer's books seem to claim some small part in Tey's attempt tounderstand the very real mystery unfolding in her life. Since Upson bases these books on real-life events, they have the effect of being a psychological study of the real criminal's life, both in her book and in her main character's show more work-in-progress. It makes for an ingenious, complex shifting of focus, masterfully handled by Upson. Her characters are well-developed while retaining parts of the personal, still to be discovered through the challenges they face. The setting plays a large part in creating the stage on which the action is carried out show less

So. Many. Secrets. Yes, almost every cozy set in a British village reveals a collection of secrets; however, author Nicola Upson’s second novel in a series featuring Scottish novelist and playwright Josephine Tey has more — and worse — secrets than most.

Handsome, charming, reckless Harry Pinching has finally met his end at the age of 26, leaving behind his devastated sisters, his twin Morwenna and 14-year-old Loveday. The presumption is that it was an accident. However, Tey’s friend Detective Inspector Archie Penrose, down in his native Loe, Cornwall, for a holiday with Tey, begins to wonder if Pinching’s death wasn’t murder.

Upson packs Angel with Two Faces with so many twists, and the ending will come as quite a shock. In show more this novel, unlike the first, the relationship between Tey and Penrose doesn’t ring false. There’s no sophomore slump for Upson! No. 2 improves on the debut novel, An Expert in Murder, in every way. show less

This is a review of both Nicole Upson's Angel with Two Faces and Jacqueline Winspear's Birds of a Feather.

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Law & Order: SVU vs Call the Midwife

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Both books are in between the two world wars, trauma-loaded, woman-led mysteries with the same coy cosy-looking cover art reserved for women authors, but they couldn't be more different.

On one hand, Josephine Tey is entangled in sex crimes ahoy. What the what! I get the whole ooh dark cliffside small town Broadchurch mystery but this was another level. But as with sexsationalist stories, my furrowed brows binged it in a day and immediately went in search of other reviews for reassurance of how over-the-top this was.

Even if the dialogues with the guilty fully tilt to melodrama, Upson really show more knows how to describe a landscape and set a mood. While I could do without Winspear giving me details of Dobbs' travels, I could (and did) read hundreds of pages of Upson setting the scene.

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On the other hand, Maisie Dobbs is doing her usual holistic mystery solving and healing. Everything has a positive sheen, everybody is actually good deep down. I did appreciate Waite getting such a rounded characterisation, even if his acceptance of change comes too conveniently quickly.

My third Dobbs and the secret ingredient seem to be centering a lesser-known but emotionally-charged fact about the war. It's working for me, but I still feel like the book could be a lot shorter without losing much substance.

While I'm on editing mode, stop writing Billy's speech with all the apostrophes and 'e and wiv! Just say he has a "lower class" accent at the start and write what he's saying like how all the other characters' dialogues are written! If you're so keen to really phonetically capture all your characters' speech, then I'm expecting everyone's to have italics and extra letters and misspellings and grammar mistakes.

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I'd still pick up more of both authors but there may be a bit more skimming of both. show less

Author Josephine Tey is looking forward to a holiday at the Cornwall estate that is home to her good friend, Scotland Yard Inspector Archie Penrose, and his cousins the Motleys. Josephine hopes to get a good start on her second mystery novel. Things don't work out as planned. An unexplained death and a murder require Archie's professional attention, and Josephine gets drawn into the community's secrets further than either she or Archie intends.

This is the second book in Nicola Upson's series featuring Josephine Tey as a real life crime solver. It's better plotted than the first book. The Cornwall landscape sounds magical, and I'd love to see the places described in the book – especially the Minack Theatre on a cliff overlooking the show more sea. The book deals with a fair amount of violence, but Upson generally allows the reader to infer the actions that produced the physical effects she describes. Readers are spared a lot of graphic details. The central characters were more comfortable than I am with ethical questions surrounding end of life issues and sexual boundaries. Although the book is set in the spring of 1935, the attitudes of the main characters seem more reflective of the 21st century. Reservations aside, this book was a page-turner, and I look forward to spending more time with Josephine and Archie in the next book in the series. show less

Book two in the mystery series featuring Josephine Tey and Detective Inspector Archie Penrose. Tey was a real person, and Upson uses elements of her life as well as historical events of the mid 1930s as jumping off points for these mysteries. In this episode Tey has been invited to join her friends the Motleys in Cornwall where they’ve gotten involved in the local Minock Theatre. Archie arrives in the same area to attend the funeral of a family friend, and then is convinced to take on the role the friend was to play in the community dramatic performance.

There are more family secrets here than Carter has pills. I had a difficult time at first keeping the characters straight, in part because of their interconnectedness and in part due show more to everyone’s tendency to speak in riddles and half-truths. Josephine and Archie have different approaches to gathering information, but complement one another in their efforts to ferret out the truth. There are a couple of shocking reveals and more than one twist to the plot.

As mysteries go, this was somewhat slow to get started. The action picks up once the murder happens (on page 200). It is more of a psychological drama than anything else. I’m willing to continue the series, but I hope the action picks up. show less

Inspector Archie Penrose invites Josephine Tey to his family home in Cornwall, she has planned to get some work done on her latest novel and seizes the opportunity to go there and write, not expecting that she's going to be involved in complicated local skeleton uncovering, missing people, suspicious deaths and murders.

I enjoyed this, even if I did guess a chunk of the plot twists and explaining some of them would be very spoilery. The characters are interesting and I'd like to read more in this series.

Angel with Two Faces - Nicola Upson
3 stars

This is the second book by Nicola Upson featuring the author Josephine Tey as the protagonist in a murder mystery. It’s important to realize that the Miss Tey of this book is a completely fictional character, based loosely on the historical author. For the most part the story was compelling, had good atmosphere and a few plot twists that weren’t completely predictable. The story takes place in Cornwall, between the world wars. There are wonderful descriptions of the setting and good historical detail. I thought the character development was very good, but I had some difficulty identifying which characters were speaking. It wasn’t always clear, with a chapter break or some kind of editorial show more spacing when the scene had changed and a different character was speaking. This became important at the end of the book when the action was taking place in two different settings. Some good editing would have made all the difference. show less