So, Was Josephine Tey a Snob After All?

Prepare for shocks – The Singing Sands was written in the middle of the last century, and any opinions are Tey's or her characters', not mine.

Tey writes of "nice little girls from Balham" who have been given new eyebrows by film producers and become "mysterious creatures from Omsk" - which might anchor this book in the 30s (it was found and published after her death in the early 50s). Her detective, Inspector Alan Grant, is quick to spot received ideas and "fake news", but he believes a lot of tosh about what facial features – like eyebrows – or handwriting tell you about a person. ("Large women are sexually cold" is a gem from The Daughter of Time.)

Grant takes the night train to Scotland to get away from it all, only to find a dead man in the next compartment. He is supposed to be having a holiday (and a nervous breakdown), but he becomes obsessed with the man in B7.

Grant arrives at the "clean" Highlands and there is a lot of blether about "clear" trout streams. Like Tey, Grant is a native Scot, and he stays with his Scottish cousin Laura and her husband and son. The adults speak the Queen's English, having been to the right schools, but the little boy proudly speaks the local accent. According to Laura, "the Gaels" are "the only known race who have no word for no". Out fishing, Grant and the boy meet a preposterous, kilted Scottish nationalist known as "Wee Archie" – who is actually English.

Inspired by a poem scribbled by the dead man, Grant ploughs through books on the Hebrides - it seems everyone has written one, of varying value. The librarian opines that the authors have a "tendency to idealise a primitive people".

Grant sets off for the Hebrides on the track of B7. He finds it's blowing a gale that never lets up (it's March). There's a hotel, but the islanders import all their — inadequate — food, he has to beg for bed clothes, and the chambermaid doesn't know how to build a fire or cook. Plus her legs are short!

Grant finds the "singing sands" (it's more of a squeak) on a windswept beach. Returning, he decides to go the ceilidh (dance) and enjoys himself reeling with the stumpy chambermaid, who is a good sort. But then up pops Wee Archie to give a separatist speech in Gaelic.

There are songs, and Grant doesn't think much of the tunes – "musically negligible, some of them deplorable". Girl singers have no expression, a flaunting tenor hasn't bothered to have voice lessons. "The few inspired songs had... gone over the world on their own wings. It was better that these feeble imitations be left to die."

Grant hopes that Laura won't wait too long before sending her son to school in England: "The quality of Scotchness was a highly concentrated essence, and should always be diluted. As an ingredient it was admirable; neat, it was as abominable as ammonia."

As Grant flies over France in search of clues, Britain is obscured by cloud. What would the world be like if the place had never existed, he asks himself. "An all-Spanish America, one supposed. A French India; an India without a colour-bar and so racially intermarried that it had lost its identity."

The story ends abruptly and rather melodramatically. B7's attractive American buddy seems ready to settle down with the ladylike Daphne – but he could never have aspired to the aristocratic Zoe, whom we are supposed to admire. She is so beautiful that she can stand a plain hairstyle. I hate her already.

And I'm rather disappointed that Wee Archie doesn't turn out to be planning a Riddle of the Sands attack on England. What would Tey make of Nicola Sturgeon? She thinks nations should keep their "identity", but looks down on "primitive" Scots. She herself was no aristocrat.

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