The Expensive Halo

Astute, skilful… thoroughly interesting

Josephine Tey's classic historical novel set among the lives of the English aristocracy in the 1920s.

London, the end of the Roaring Twenties. Rich, aristocratic It-Girl Ursula Deane takes a capricious fancy to penniless violinist, Gareth Ellis. Simultaneously, Gareth's sister is pursued by Ursula's brother, the dilettante, Lord Chitterne. The thorny intertwining of two families at opposite ends of English society is set in motion. How will it end? Will love conquer the class divide?

About the Author. Josephine Tey was the pen name of Elizabeth MacKintosh, the Scottish author who rose to fame through her Inspector Alan Grant crime novels. Grant was a dogged and diligent Detective Inspector in the CID at Scotland Yard, and one of the first fictional detectives to be a Scotland Yard Police Officer. Her first mystery novel, which also introduced Inspector Grant, The Man in the Queue, was published in 1929 and was awarded the Dutton Mystery Prize when published in America. The Daughter of Time, the fifth Inspector Grant novel in the six book series, was named as the greatest crime novel of all time by the Crime Writers' Association. Rather unusually for such a successful Golden Age author, she never joined the illustrious Detection Club – probably because she delighted in subverting the conventions of the genre, thereby breaking the Clubs 'commandments'. A shy and private person, she never married and eluded the attentions of biographers until 2015. Josephine Tey died in 1952, leaving her entire estate to the National Trust.