Typically they are evil because their egotism destroys their compassion and their capacity for restraint.
Over and over in Tey's novels innocence is destroyed by exposure to evil. Sometimes loss of innocence means simply being forced to admit that a friend or relative is corrupt. As Marion Sharpe observes in The Franchise Affair: "What can be more shattering than to find the person you have lived with and loved all those years not only doesn't exist but has never existed? That the person you have so much loved not only doesn't love you but doesn't care two hoots about you and never did? What is there left for someone like that? She can never again take a step on to green grass without wondering if it is bog." Often the innocent suffer more directly. In half of Tey's novels completely blameless people are murdered because of their killers' unrestrained ambition, and the discovery of such evil creates a sense of implication. As Tad Cullen says in The Singing Sands (1952) when he discovers why his friend died, "I feel dirty all over."
Tey's detectives are implicated in the same way.
This is a free page. This page contains 183 words. This
biography contains 7,240 words (approx. 24 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Elizabeth Mackintosh Access Pass.
