The first of Tey's Inspector Grant mysteries concerns the murder of an unknown man, apparently struck down as he stands in a ticket queue for a London musical comedy. Grant tenaciously pursues his suspects throughout the length of Britain and the labyrinth of London.

Beneath the sea cliffs of the south coast, suicides are a sad but common fact. Yet even the hardened coastguard knows something is wrong when a beautiful young film actress is found lying dead on the beach one morning. Inspector Grant has to take a more professional attitude: death by suicide, however common, has to have a motive — just like murder…

Marion Sharpe and her mother seem an unlikely duo to be found on the wrong side of the law. Quiet and ordinary, they have led a peaceful and unremarkable life at their country home, The Franchise. Unremarkable that is, until the police turn up with a demure young woman on their doorstep. Not only does Betty Kane accuse them of kidnap and abuse, she can back up her claim with a detailed description of the attic room in which she was kept, right down to the crack in its round window. But there's something about Betty Kane's story that doesn't quite add up. Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard is stumped. It takes Robert Blair, solicitor turned amateur detective, to solve the mystery that lies at the heart of The Franchise Affair.

It was rumoured that Hollywood stars would go down on their knees for the privilege of being photographed by the good-looking, brilliantly talented and ultra-fashionable portrait photographer Leslie Searle. But what was such a gifted creature doing in such an English village backwater of Salcott St Mary? And why — and how — did he disappear? If a crime had been committed, was it murder… fraud… or simply some macabre practical joke?

Alan Grant, Scotland Yard Inspector (who appears in five other novels by the same author) is confined to bed in hospital with a broken leg. Bored and restless, he becomes intrigued by a portrait of King Richard III brought to him by a friend. He prides himself on being able to read a person’s character from his face, and King Richard seems to him a gentle and kind and wise man. Why is everyone so sure that he was a cruel murderer?

On his train journey back to Scotland for a well-earned rest, Inspector Grant learns that a fellow passenger, one Charles Martin, has been found dead. It looks like a case of misadventure — but Grant is not so sure. Teased by some enigmatic lines of verse that the deceased had apparently scrawled on a newspaper, he follows a trail to the Outer Hebrides. And though it is the end of his holiday, it is also the beginning of an intriguing investigation into the bizarre circumstances shrouding Charles Martin's death…