Miss Pym Disposes

By: Josephine Tey

Narrated by: Karen Cass

Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

This audiobook, read by Audie award-winning narrators, includes unabridged recordings of Mark Twains's greatest works: 12 novels; over 120 of his beloved short stories; Chapters From My Autobiography; 5 pieces of short non-fiction; and 6 pieces of his groundbreaking, wide-ranging travel writing.

Novels

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Coat

• The Gilded Age

• Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

• A Prince and the Pauper

• The American Claimant

• Tom Sawyer Abroad

• Tom Sawyer, Detective

• Pudd’nhead Wilson

• A Horse’s Tale

• The Mysterious Stranger

Short Stories

• Over 120 of Twain's inventive, humorous, and most-loved short stories, including:

• The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

• A Dog’s Tale

• Baker’s Blue Jay Yarn

• Jim Wolf and the Wasps

• Buck Fanshaw’s Funeral

• The 10,000 [British] Pound Bank Note

• Luck

• My First Lie and How I Got Out of It

• Was It Heaven, or Hell?

• Cannibalism in the Cars

• His Grandfather’s Old Ram

• And many more

Travel Writing and Journalism

• Old Times on the Mississippi

• Life on the Mississippi

• Chapters From My Autobiography

• The Innocents Abroad

• Roughing It

• A Tramp Abroad

• Following the Equator

• Some Rambling Notes of An Idle Excursion

• Christian Science

• Queen Victoria’s Jubilee

• My Platonic Sweetheart

• Editorial Wild Oats

Mark Twain, whose real name was Samuel Clemens, was the celebrated author of several novels, including two major classics of American literature: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He was also a riverboat pilot, journalist, lecturer, entrepreneur and inventor.

Public Domain (P)2023 SNR Audio

Critic reviews

‘[The] most interesting of the great female writers of the Golden Age' Val McDermid

A gripping story written with artfully dry wit

It was so refreshing to read about literary and boarding school life in the 1940s. The girls in the school actually worked hard had great senses of humor. The protagonist, the commentator Miss Pim who’s been invited to the school provides a sardonic, loving portrait of the girls and teachers at the school.

A true favorite for anyone who enjoys a character-focused murder mystery.

This story is deeply psychological and introspective. Some might classify it as a cozy — I would not. This British mystery deserves a place all its own among the classics of its form.

A stellar story with a fantastic narrator

I like Josephine Tey and read this book the old-fashioned way years ago, but hearing it performed by a gifted reader made it SO MUCH better than I'd remembered. Seriously, this narrator rocks, so much so that I've searched for other books she's read (very glad Audible has the option to do this) and downloaded a few because I want to hear her take on more stories.

If you're new to Josephine Tey ... you're in for a treat! I don't think she's officially considered part of the Golden Age mystery author pantheon, but her novels have a similar flair. They're witty, they're British, the characters are compelling, and the stories are transporting. Previously my favorites were Brat Farrar and Daughter of Time, but Miss Pym has now firmly claimed the number one spot in my heart.

To me, the thing that makes Josephine Tey really special and makes her work stand out from Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie (both of whom I also enjoy very much!) is the humor and the freshness. Sayers is witty, but in an urbane, I-am-a-very-well-educated-British-person-of-a-bygone-era kind of way, while Tey is funny in a way that feels much more modern. Like some enterprising plagiarist could lift big sections from her novels, plop them into a contemporary novel or screenplay, and start scooping up the accolades. And this doesn't just apply to Tey's humor. Her novels -- all the ones I've read to some degree, but Miss Pym Disposes especially -- feel of-the-moment in a way you just don't expect for books written over 50 years ago. (That said, I'm still not certain what the modern-day equivalent of a physical training college is. Or if there even is a modern-day equivalent.)

I'm sure plenty of folks have summarized Miss Pym's plot better than I could, but I do think it's worth noting that the murder occurs far later in the story than you'd expect. On my first read, I remember being 200 pages in and thinking, "When the heck is this murder going to happen?! How can our Miss Pym get to work solving a murder when there's no murder in sight?" It's unusual pacing for a murder mystery, but it works: it slowly rachets up the tension of what is primarily a story about the personalities and politics of a mid-century women's college because you spend most of the book trying to figure out who's going to be offed. And why. And how. When the expected genre conventions eventually make their appearance, you're rewarded first with what seems to be a very satisfying ending and then with a big twist at the very end. So good. Tey is a master. She deserves a much, much bigger place in the mystery canon.

Last couple hours took a vile turn

Sad that people felt joking about rape was impressive wit back then!

Not to mention promoting the belief that it’s the moral choice to let a murder (that caused a long & agonizing death, & which brought reproach to the famililess victim) be gotten away with