"Brat Farrar": a Golden Age thriller revisited

Eleven of us met in Infinity Garden in August to discuss my book choice, Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey, first published in 1949. Tey was the pen name of Elizabeth MacKintosh (1896-1952). She also wrote a very successful historical play, Richard of Bordeaux, under the name of Gordon Daviot. Her "day job" was teaching PE in girls' schools (I think this comes through in her writing).

As Josephine Tey she wrote six thrillers, all of which I read in my teens and loved. They are mainly in the genre of "Golden Age" detective stories, and I worried that she might now seem unbearably dated. Val McDermid (whom I admire both as a thriller writer and a person) wrote in 2015 that Tey "cracked open the door" of detective writing, by opening the possibilities of psychological motivations and secrets such as same-sex desire and other sexual motivations widely regarded as perversions when Tey wrote.

The plot starts with a good-looking but superannuated actor called Alec Loding bumping into a young man in London and greeting him as "Simon" before realising in amazement that he is a stranger. The stranger is Brat Farrar (Brat being a childish rendering of his name Bart, for Bartholomew). He grew up in an English orphanage but has led an adventurous and restless adult life in Central and later North America. The only being he ever loved was his American horse Smoky.

Alec takes him to a pub and tells him that he looks startlingly like Alec's cousin Simon Ashby, and even more like Simon's twin Patrick, who disappeared at the age of 13. Simon is about to become 21 and will inherit a substantial estate and money, which would otherwise have been Patrick's. Alec tries to persuade Brat to "reappear" as Patrick, gaining the inheritance which they will share.

Brat's first reaction is to dismiss the idea – he is rootless and adventurous, but essentially honest. Gradually Alec wins him over, especially when Brat discovers that the family business is horses, his greatest love. Over a few weeks Brat accepts the challenge and Alec (who knows the family, its history, house and surroundings intimately) coaches him thoroughly. The book is told mainly through Brat's eyes and thoughts.

So it's an impostor story, and largely based on a real 19th-century case in which a young man from Australia claimed to be the long-lost heir to the Tichborne peerage and fortune (he wasn't). But in this book we know from the start that Brat isn't Patrick. The tension comes partly from our ambivalence about Brat; we can't justify his dishonest pretence, but he is likeable and we sympathise with his difficult past and his longing for a family. And most of the family, after initial suspicion, come to like him as well.

The other tension comes from his increasingly worrying suspicions and discoveries about Patrick's twin Simon, leading to a dramatic and frightening denouement. To my relief, most of the group agreed that it was a light and easy but enjoyable read.

There are slightly too many coincidences and perfect answers, and the ending is a bit too glib. Of course it has dated and many attitudes have changed. Tey is powerfully upper-middle-class and her working class characters are always either salt of the earth and respectful, or spivs and floozies. She has a definite "jolly hockey sticks" feel, and has little sympathy for troubled or needy people.

But it's a decent page-turner, the characters and dialogue are usually believable and lively, sometimes funny, and it drew us in.