Josephine and Marta are spending time in the cottage Josephine inherited in the village of Polstead, Suffolk, as the village prepares for an influx of evacuees from London. In the chaos that results from the arrival of a much larger number of children than anticipated, a child disappears... The premise of this book sounded interesting from the very beginning. It was a quick, easy read and if you are looking for a quick, entertaining read then this is a great book for you!

I am a huge fan of Nicola Upson and was grateful to receive a copy of this book in advance from netgalley in return for an honest review.

Upson makes clever points throughout this novel that harken to the pandemic world we are currently living in.

This is a tense novel and near impossible to put down.

A child goes missing during the allocation of evacuees at the start of the Second World War. We are quickly drawn in to village life and how the community can come together whilst being torn apart behind closed doors.

I recommend this highly to previous reader of the author but it’s also an incredible book if you want to step outside your comfort zone.

It is 1st September 1939 and the UK begins mass evacuations of children from major urban situations to more rural counties, anticipating the declaration of war that will come two days later. In the Suffolk village of Polstead preparations are underway for the reception and billeting of the twenty children allocated to them. Josephine Tey, author of mystery stories and plays, lives in the village although she commutes to Scotland for long periods so is not allocated a child, but agrees to help out with their reception. By the time the bus arrives, late, tensions are already high and many the villages’ own children are fractious. One such is Annie, a stubborn and determined five-year-old, daughter of a farming couple and granddaughter of the owner of the village store. It is quickly clear that the planning process has gone wildly awry and there are far more children than expected, not mention some mothers with babies. In the chaos Annie’s mother agrees that she can go to her grandmother’s house overnight, before turning up at the village fête the next day. It is only when she doesn’t turn up that they discover she didn’t go to her grandmother’s and has disappeared.
Josephine becomes involved in the subsequent investigation, supported by her lover Marta and long-time friend DCI Penrose from Scotland Yard. He is actually dealing with a murder in London but is visiting Polstead on another matter. As the investigation continues other matters start to take prominence and old animosities and conflicts within the village start to rise to the surface, confusing the picture and throwing up potential suspects both among the villagers and among the Londoners, including connections to those who are still in the capital. The intricacies of the relationships contribute to the intricacies of the plot making it harder to solve than it might be.
The character Josephine Tey in the books is (very loosely) based on the real life mystery writer, a contemporary of other women crime writers such as Margery Allingham (who also features in this story) and Agatha Christie, among others. This is the tenth in the series, but reads perfectly satisfactorily as a standalone. This is in no small way due to the writing, which is quite beautiful. It is in a style which reflects the time period in which it is set, but it is original, never pastiche and, interestingly, doesn’t closely resemble Tey’s own books. I enjoyed it a lot.
I would like to thank NetGalley, the publishers and the author for providing me with a draft proof copy for the purpose of this review.

Josephine Tey is a relative newcomer to the village of Polstead in Suffolk, where she shares a cottage with Marta - when Marta isn’t in America.
The village is getting ready for the war - everyone is waiting for Churchill’s announcement, but the day before the annual summer fete, Polstead sees an influx of evacuees from London. Josephines’s friend Chief inspector Archie Penrose is also in the area with his new girlfriend and family.
Everything seems to be fine, and Josephine and another writer are judging the various stalls, until they realise that a small, almost 5 year old, girl is missing - both mother and grandmother thought that she had been with the other. In all the chaos of the evacuees arriving, somehow little Annie has gone missing!
Village secrets are unearthed as Penrose starts a search - with families making accusations about others.
Penrose also has a murder in London that he has to work on, but the actions of some of Polstead’s residents are difficult to ignore.
A good read!

Thankyou for giving me the chance to read in advance. Excellent style and well written. Had me turning the page until the end.

This is the first book that I have read that has been written by Nicola Upson. It is the latest in a series of novels featuring a fictional version of the real crime novelist Josephine Tey. I don’t think the fact that I haven’t read the preceding novels affected my enjoyment of this story.
The book is set in the early days of the Second World War when the mass evacuation of children from London to the safety of the countryside is underway. All seems fine at first, if a little chaotic, but it soon becomes apparent that one little girl is missing.
The story is full of believable and interesting characters and I found the atmosphere light but compelling. It is a long time since I have read any Agatha Christie novels but to me this novel has a very similar feel.
All in all a very enjoyable read.

Dear Little Corpses - Nicola Upson

I found this to be a book of real compromise, moving from from 'sunday tea time stories', to that of disturbing murder. Even as I write that it seems an extraordinary thing to say, yet somehow still accurate.

Lots of characters involved (a few too many for me), and lots of twists and turns, eventually. Also (and I know this has been deliberately written so), lots of un-answered questions, even at the very end, which are more annoying than thought-provoking.

I did 'enjoy' this, but even when I reflect back on it now, find that it never really settled and was put together in an often fractured and confusing manner - as if the author had too many ideas to cram in to one book and thread them all successfully together, but did so anyway.

Harrowing and sad.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book. As a lover of historical fiction and mystery, this was an easy sell for me and I am so glad it was a winner!

Great writing and style, I found it so interesting as this time period has always fascinated me. II thought the characters were well rounded and I was kept guessing until the end. No complaints here!

Would 100% recommend!

I would recommend this book to people who like historical crime novels. I was drawn to this book due to the intriguing title and premise. I really liked the idea of the mystery with the impending Second World War as the backdrop. I think the evacuees and the village setting was a great idea to set the scene.

After settling in, I enjoyed the story progression but initially got confused with the characters and how they related to each other. I found the book very readable and enjoyed the way it was written. However, I think how it jumped around at the beginning, didn’t help the reader to contextualise characters. I was disappointed as I think too much of the narrative was spent setting the scene rather than investigating what happens. As a result, I found the ending somewhat rushed. Also, as much as I sympathised with the character in the final scene, it seemed a bit over dramatic.

I really liked the character of Josephine but I found some characters (especially the more conflicted ones) could have been fleshed out more to make events a little more believable and characters more dimensional.

Overall, I did like this book but I was left feeling a bit disappointed. I admit this could be the fact that I had hyped it up before reading…

What begins as a story many of us have heard several times, about sending the children away from the cities during the Second World War, to towns and villages where the bombs hopefully wouldn't land, quickly changes as a young child goes missing. Everyone is quick to blame certain individuals, but without any proof or suitable evidence, the potential blame is carried far and wide..
The use of Josephine Tay as a real character playing a fictional character while living in the village proved to be my only difficulty with this brilliant writing because that was a false name she used to disguise her real name and I wondered if it might not have been better to have her admit to her real name within this context, or did I miss this? Nevertheless, having negotiated this hurdle it was disappointing to see that her lover was going away immediately to work with Alfred Hitchcock. This would leave the writer of murder mysteries trying to break the real mystery of how and where the girl had disappeared.
The central part of this story is explained extremely well by this writer who takes you to the location and shares the heartache of young children leaving their families and the difficulties of moving in and living normal lives with complete strangers, sometimes hundreds of miles from home. Without the benefit of modern technology it wasn't easy to tell the parents of these children that their young ones had arrived safely and this is one of the major causes of the problems in locating the missing child.
At every single stage of this story, I felt the impending gloom of the war about to arrive in just a few days time. The research in completing this novel is outstanding and helps you understand everything happening in the village, the potential of war and the difficulties in trying to find a missing child.
Receiving a free copy of this book, I'm extremely grateful and I will look out for more in this genre. I will also seek out the murder mysteries by Josephine Tey as my minimal investigation suggests that many of her books were very good. I will also look for more by Nicola Upson because she has introduced me to a period in British history that I used to know very little about, but now I understand so much more.

A Devastating Tale…
The tenth in the Josephine Tey mystery series finds the Golden Age crime author amidst a personal struggle, with the outside world in chaos and the village itself under a deep, dark cloud of suspicion. As always, this is beautifully written, hugely evocative and with characters that are incredibly well formed, and here Upson draws a devastating, emotionally disturbing and turbulent storyline which leaves the reader reeling. Where lies the danger?

“Dear little corpses, all in a row”

“… he wondered who had had the bright idea of naming this evacuation procedure after a fairytale in which children were spirited away from their families and never seen again”

This book broke me.
Just finished reading it and I feel devastated.
Set in 1939 London countryside when, because of bombs families decided to sent their own children away to the country where they would have been safe … just to find out that there’s nowhere safe that tragedy won’t follow.
Wherever children are involved, every story becomes suddenly delicate and impossible to tell.
This was no exception.
In a seemingly calm and pacific village, the most terrible things are going to happen and I don’t think you can read about it and just forget it.
Definitely check the trigger warnings before reading this book but believe me when I say that it was devastatingly beautiful.
While developing the plot, the author gave us some very good example of love and acceptance, of family and the meaning of caring.
There are some characters whose actions really touched me, and others I’d like I’d never heard about.
There are some truths that deserved to be revealed but should have never happened in the first place.
But overall a great thriller book with a lot to learn from !!

“I know that you will all play your part, with calmness and with courage”

“Sometimes it does a child good to be scared, Chief Inspector … otherwise they go around thinking that nothing can ever happen to them - and we all know that’s not true, don’t we?”

‘There’s something very levelling about Village life, isn’t there?’

I’m back in the 30’s and the eve of war with Josephine Tey. She is at her cottage in Polstead, Suffolk and the war machine is gearing up ready with a horde of evacuees descending. Even Josephine and Marta cannot refuse to help.
I love all the little historical snippets in these novels, in this one Tey references her cottage to ‘The Red Barn Murder’ , an infamous murder from the 1700’s.

Margery Allingham also features in this mystery and is wonderfully written. The characterisations are fabulous, I really fully expect some of these people to step out of the pages of the book and into my living room! There are idyllic country Village scenes, a church fete, cake judging and fancy dress competitions but beneath this something darker is lurking. The story is told from different viewpoints initially and trying to link everything together in my mind was difficult but the author draws you in and very cleverly untangles these threads for the ‘oh’ moment.

‘You never know what’s going on behind a front door once it’s closed.’

When a village girl goes missing, you can feel the tension and heartbreak in the writing. There are plenty of secrets here and people start to look at themselves. This book is atmospheric and quite poignant with the declaration of war and restrictions imposed it felt similar to our lockdowns in a small way. As the hunt for the missing child intensifies, things become much darker and when the horrifying truth is revealed it was shocking and unexpected.

This is such a wonderful series of books, I haven’t read them all yet so I’m glad I can spend more time sleuthing with Josephine Tey.

✩✩✩✩✰

I would like to thank Netgalley and Faber and Faber Ltd for an advance copy of Dear Little Corpses, the tenth novel to feature Golden Age author Josephine Tay.

01/09/39 and Britain is on the verge of war and evacuation is underway. The Suffolk village of Polstead is readying for their quota, but when the children turn up there are more than anticipated and in the chaos a little girl goes missing. Josephine enlists the visiting DCI Archie Penrose to investigate.

I thoroughly enjoyed Dear Little Corpses, which has an interesting mystery and a strong sense of the era and its uncertainties.

I’m not quite sure how to describe the novel, because it is quite unusual in its composition. I’ll start with the obvious and try to explain what I mean. The novel is told from various points of view, not just Josephine and Archie, so it is difficult to know where they all fit in - are they simply there to amplify the emotions of the time or to be potential suspects? It’s hard to tell for most of the novel. In fact, I would defy any reader to reach the correct conclusion before the denouement as there’s so much obfuscation. Furthermore there is a massive twist that upends any speculation the reader may have indulged in. And then there’s some old secrets that may have a bearing. It’s really clever and had my head spinning with all the possible permutations and I still didn’t get it right.

I liked the setting and the characterisation. Josephine is the link between them, despite not wanting to get too attached. I’m not trying to make a comparison between the onset of war and the pandemic, but the emotions involved aren’t so different, fear of death and the unknown and the curtailment of everyday freedoms, and the pandemic allows us to identify and understand to a greater extent than would have been possible a few years earlier. Again it’s clever.

Dear Little Corpses is a good read that I have no hesitation in recommending.

A really good and interesting period piece. Written in a very human style, without sensationalism, centred around a missing child which brings to light the secrets kept in a small village. A group of small children evacuated in the Second World war show how devestating their evacuation was to their parents and how disrupting to the village.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher I read a free advance review copy of the book. This review is voluntary, honest and my own opinion.

I wasn't sure whether I would like this book as it is fictionalising the life of Josephine Tey, a favourite author of mine, but I was completely won over. The story is compelling, the characters are excellent, and totally believable, and there is a great sense of period atmosphere. The story is heartbreaking at times, but serves as a great reminder of what a sacrifice parents made when allowing their children to be evacuated, for their safety.
I will definitely look out for more books by this author.

The summary/blog intrigue me. The writing style and vocabulary I enjoyed but the story did not engage with my interest to continue reading & unfortunately did not finish the novel. It may be that this is not my time to be reading this particular genre? I will re-read at a later date.

I give a 3 star rating.

I WANT TO THANK NETGALLEY FOR THE OPPORTUNITY OF READING AN ADVANCED COPY OF THIS BOOK IN RETURN FOR AN HONEST REVIEW

Ooh this was so good. I have not read the other books in the series but will definitely have to now. This was one of the best mystery books I have read in years. The setting was so well described you could almost smell the coal fires. I loved the twists and turns of the story. This is a book you must read.

I always eagerly anticipate Nicola Upson’s novels featuring Josephine Tey, I have read them all over the years and when I saw this latest instalment available from Faber & Faber through Netgalley I was very excited to read it.


Set around the beginning of World War II, Josephine is staying at her cottage in a Suffolk village with her lover Marta hoping for a nice quiet break before Marta has to leave for Hollywood and an Alfred Hitchcock filming schedule, when evacuees from London descend on the village. With 3 times the number of people the organisers were expecting needing somewhere to stay the two women are persuaded to take a young lad in as a temporary measure when the villagers that are billeting his little sister refuse to take him as well.

The story soon gathers tension when, during the village fete the local shopkeeper’s young granddaughter is found to be missing. Luckily Josephine’s Scotland Yard policeman friend Archie is visiting with his new girlfriend and her children so takes control of the search.
The village dynamics are very well described, with neighbours’ gossip and suspicions aroused. There are some excellent red herrings and the ending took me in a different direction than I was expecting.

The wonderful Margery Allingham makes a cameo appearance which was a nice touch.

All in all, an absolute treat for fans of the series, and no doubt will make newbies want to read more.

Another assured outing into the world of Josephine Tey as seen through the eyes of Nicola Upson. My test of a good crime novel is when I'm desperate to read it but I can't bear to read on for fear of what's coming. By page 33 I was very worried about little Angela and not keen on the sound of Ned. The suspense is well done, and the clashing of worlds with another of my icons Margery Allingham was well done. One step removed from Albert Campion and a small insight into his mysterious relationship with the Travellers.
Rather photogenic/televisual I thought. Finished reading at 2.30am.... another test of a good read!