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Perhaps the finest novel of all by a Scot who died too young, Brat Farrar is the tale of a young man who assumes the identity of a missing heir and becomes his champion.
If Patrick really had committed suicide who was this mysterious young man claiming to be him and calling himself Brat Farrar? Josephine Tey was the pen name of the Scottish writer Elizabeth MacKintosh, who also wrote acclaimed plays such as Richard of Bordeaux, under the pen name Gordon Daviot. In 1929 she entered a detective novel,The Man In The Queue, into a competition, but it was another seven years before she would publish a follow-up, A Shilling for Candles. Both featured the gentleman detective, Inspector Grant, who cropped up in all but one of her books (and the one in which he does not is linked by another character). But it was not until after the Second World War that Tey began to publish -- in an all too brief flowering -- a half dozen of the finest crime novels of that period. During the space of few brief years she wrote Miss Pym Disposes, The Franchise Affair, Brat Farrar -- perhaps her finest novel, To Love and Be Wise, The Daughter of Time, and finally, The Singing Sands, published soon after her death in February 1952. Brat Farrar is the story of a young man who takes part in a swindle, and suddenly finds himself the champion of the missing heir that he is impersonating against his victim's conceited twin brother. The novel opens six weeks before Simon Ashby's twenty-first birthday, when he is due to inherit the small country estate of Latchetts. There have been Ashbys at Latchetts for over two centuries, but the last eight years have been fraught; Simon's parents killed in a plane crash, his twin brother Patrick disappearing and a verdict of suicide returned, but somehow, under his Aunt Bee's stewardship, they have survived. But this cosy celebration is about to be blown apart. In London, the Ashby's dissolute near-neighbour Alec Ledingham runs into a young man who he at first mistakes for Simon. Astonished at the resemblance, Alec suggests a scheme to swindle the Ashbys, and earn himself a small stipend. At first Brat refuses, until Alec mentions that they have stables. And then curiosly, Brat changes his mind. For he is an orphan who has spent his short life drifting around the world, and his one love is horses. Despite his cool, calm exterior, Brat is in turmoil inside as he proceeds with the scheme. Even more so when he meets Aunt Bee, and realizes that this is a warm, decent human being that he is swindling; but when he comes down to Latchetts, he meets and likes his 'sister' Eleanor, is challenged by Simon, and adores the horses. And he finds an odd sense of partisanship with the missing twin; Brat sat looking at him for a long time. "Don't you recognize me?" he said. "No. Who are you?" "Retribution," said Brat. Without exception, the characters are well and warmly drawn, and the resolution to the mystery is entirely down to character, including who Brat really is. A wonderful, engaging book.
The copyright of the article Brat Farrar in Modern American Fiction is owned by Colin Harvey. Permission to republish Brat Farrar in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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