Josephine Tay (present. Elizabeth Mackintosh (1896-1952) is a famous writer, the daughter of a Scot and an Englishwoman, a recognized master of the British detective. In 1929, she made her debut with the book "The Man from 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, attentively listens to the testimony of eyewitnesses; and even if, it would seem, everything testifies against the suspect, Alan Grant will not leave a single piece of evidence unchecked. In short, being in a difficult situation, anyone would dream of such a conscientious police inspector! The collection includes three novels from the cycle: "The Murderer in the crowd, or the Man from the queue" (1929), "A Shilling for candles" (1936) and "The Case of the abduction of Betty Kane" (1948). Based on the second of them, Alfred Hitchcock made the film "Young and Innocent" in 1937, the film versions of 1951 and 1962 (under the title "The Franchise Affair") and the television series of 1988 were created based on the novel "The Case of the Abduction of Betty Kane".