Book review: Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey

The tenth book I read in 2016 was my last Josephine Tey novel, Miss Pym Disposes.  Very different from her Alan Grant series, this book deals with a single woman who has rather surprised herself by writing a book on a hot topic which has brought her considerable fame and respect -- and the ability to quit her day job.  Lucy Pym accepts an invitation from an old school acquaintance who is now the headmistress of a girls' physical training college to give a lecture to the student body.  She is charmed enough by her re-entry into the company of the young and female to agree to stay on rather indefinitely through the end of the term.

A physical training college must have been a remarkable thing.  I spent a great deal of the book trying to figure out exactly what the girls were training to be.  It seems to have involved both anatomy and medical studies and sports, dance, gymnastics, and calisthenics, which is a double-bill one would be hard pressed to find today.  One doesn't go to Harvard Medical and Tennis.  It would seem that, once physically trained, the girls go on either to medical clinics or to sportsmistress positions at girls' schools, the latter of which is more prestigious.

If one didn't know that one was reading a Josephine Tey book and hadn't read the back-cover blurb promising a murder, one would think that this was simply a book about life among the students and faculty in a girls' college.  It's not that it's not an enjoyable read, without the promise of bloodshed, but if you're reading for the murder mystery, be aware that that aspect doesn't turn up until you're three-quarters of the way through the book.  I rather wish I hadn't read the blurb, as, as much as I was enjoying it, I kept thinking, "Yes, and...?  When are we going to get to it?"  I would characterize this more as a book in which a murder plays a role than as a murder mystery.  (And unlike most of Tey's other books, I was able to predict the killer in this case.)