Blood and Thunder I know I have drivelled on about crime novels before, but I would like to draw your attention to one particular exponent of the genre, Josephine Tey. Miss Tey’s real name was Elizabeth Mackintosh. She was from Inverness, and in addition to crime novels written as Josephine Tey, she wrote historical dramas under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot, the surname taken from a village in the East Highlands, frequently visited by her family in her childhood. For modern readers of crime fiction, it is easy to underrate the influence of Josephine Tey. How many readers of Ruth Rendell’s A Sleeping Life appreciate that the idea of a male and female character who actually turn out to be same person being the explanation for an otherwise impossible mystery originated with Miss Tey in To Love and Be Wise ? There is no reason why readers of The Wench is Dead by Colin Dexter, in which Inspector Morse solves a historical murder mystery from his hospital bed should know that the idea origin...