The Franchise Affair (Inspector Alan Grant #3)

The Franchise Affair is a crime novel by the Scottish writer Josephine Tey, published in 1949. It is the third book in her series about Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, though Grant's part in the story is a small one compared with that of the family solicitor.

Robert Blair is a country lawyer in a small English town with a quiet practice, and his evening is interrupted by a telephone call from Marion Sharpe, who lives with her mother at The Franchise. The two of them have been accused of abducting and imprisoning a young woman, Betty Kane, and the account she gives is detailed enough to be difficult.

Blair takes on the case and finds that the accusation will not be settled by evidence alone. Miss Kane's account of what happened is circumstantial and coherent, the accused household has no alibi worth the name, and the newspaper coverage is doing damage faster than any court can repair it. The novel is less a puzzle about a crime than an examination of how a story told confidently by one person can be believed over the word of another.