The Singing Sands

The Singing Sands, published posthumously in 1952, is the final Inspector Grant novel. Grant, on sick leave and struggling with claustrophobia, discovers the body of an unknown young man on the London-to-Scotland sleeper train. A few lines of poetry found in the dead man's possession become an obsession, leading Grant on an unofficial investigation through the Scottish Highlands and the Hebrides. Tey's last novel is as much a meditation on landscape, recovery, and the compulsive nature of curiosity as it is a detective story.