Josephine Tay (real name Elizabeth Mackintosh; 1896–1952) is a famous writer, the daughter of a Scot and an Englishwoman, and a recognized master of the British detective story. In 1929, she made her debut with The Man in the Queue, in which Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant (later the hero of five more of her novels) first appeared. The inspector trusts his own intuition, but not completely: he carefully weighs all the evidence, carefully listens to the testimony of eyewitnesses; and even if everything seems to point against the suspect, Alan Grant will not leave a single piece of evidence untested. In short, if you find yourself in a difficult situation, anyone would dream of such a conscientious police inspector! The collection includes three novels from the series: “The Killer in the Crowd, or the Man in the Line” (1929), “A Shilling for Candles” (1936) and “The Case of the Kidnapping of Betty Kane” (1948). Based on the second of them, Alfred Hitchcock made the film “Young and Innocent” in 1937, and based on the novel “The Case of the Kidnapping of Betty Kane,” film versions were created in 1951 and 1962 (called “The Franchise Air”) and a television series in 1988.