Standing in line in a long queue for a show at a theater, a young man collapses—and it quickly becomes apparent that he has been stabbed in the back. Inspector Alan Grant of the Metropolitan Police is soon on the case, though he finds it deeply puzzling—not least because the identity of the victim is itself a mystery.

The Man in the Queue , published in 1929, was the first in a series of successful detective novels written by the Scottish author Elizabeth MacKintosh writing under the pen name Josephine Tey , though it was first published using the pseudonym “Gordon Daviot.”