I think I’ve read this book before; I sort of had a deja vu idea of what was going to happen almost from the beginning of the story. Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable, if familiar, trip.

Tey’s detective stories are often concerned with elaborate lies, and impersonations, and unravelling the truth. Brat Farrar is just such a story, in which the truth about a thirteen year old boy’s disappearance nine years before the story actually begins, is a truth that needs a lot of investigation and patient scrutiny to come clear. And Brat Farrar, an orphan who’s impersonating the missing boy, is the only one who can discover what really, really happened to Patrick Ashby, the boy who’s come back from the dead in the person of Brat Farrar.

Tey’s writing reminds me of Daphne du Maurier (atmospheric), Agatha Christie (great plot development), and Ruth Rendell (psychological suspense).

Denny of The Book Den on Josephine Tey.