Fifteen-year-old Betty Kane has never put a foot wrong. Naturally, everyone is shocked and horrified to hear her story – that she was kidnapped, tortured and held prisoner by Marion Sharpe and her elderly mother, owners of the mysterious old house, The Franchise. But are the two women really guilty of such a horrendous crime? Every page resonates with tension as the story unfolds – did they or didn’t they take a young girl prisoner? And whose story can you trust?

‘The Franchise Affair‘ is now my favourite Josephine Tey novel. I loved the writing, the originality of the story and the deep insights into characters who all came to feel real to me.

The story is deeply embedded in the culture of rural England as it was a few years after the end of World War II, yet the novel felt modern and fresh.

The quality of the prose pulled me into the story from the first page. Tey effortlessly captured the character of a small English Market Town that has recently been through some hard times but whose inhabitants have never doubted that they would muddle through somehow.

The story is told mostly through the eyes of Robert Blair, a respected local solicitor leading a long-established firm. He is a nice but habitually dull man who is content, in his forties to have an unchallenging, unchanging professional life. He has never married. His household is maintained by his aunt. His life is one of pleasant, unvarying routine. He is a man who blends so well with his environment that he seems to embody the decent but complacent, slightly stagnant spirit of the town. Then, an unexpected phone call at the end of an ordinary day drops him down the rabbit hole that will become known to the public as The Franchise Affair. What follows disrupts his routine and robs him of his equilibrium. It tests his values and requires him to choose a side and take a risk.

Despite what is implied by the publisher’s synopsis, ‘The Franchise Affair‘ is not a thriller or a detective story. It is a beautifully written, civilised, empathetic account of the consequences of vicious lies aimed at the vulnerable.

It isn’t a novel where the main challenge is to decide whether or not the alleged kidnapping happened but rather one that asks the reader to consider what a decent man should do when faced with uncertainty, doubt and risk.

‘The Franchise Affair‘ is, nevertheless, a lively book. There are dramatic courtroom scenes. There are instances of violence and vandalism prompted by hate and malice arising from the charged atmosphere around the accusations made against the two women who live at The Franchise. There are vitriolic letters in the gutter press that closely resemble the hate spewed out by keyboard warriors on social media today. Hate, it seems, is immutable. There are also instances of kindness and protection prompted by people whose values insist on decent behaviour. values that req people should be treated decently.

I became completely engaged with the people in the book. I was more concerned with them and what they were going through than with whether or not the kidnapping had happened or even whether or not the women would be found guilty. The plot kept my interest but the people captured my emotions.

I recommend the audiobook version of ‘The Franchise Affair‘. Carole Boyd’s narration perfectly captured the tone of the prose and helped bring the characters to life.