A physical education teacher for eight years, Tey became a full-time writer with the successful publication of her first book, The Man in the Queue (1929). She wrote some novels and the majority of her plays under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot. Among the plays is Richard of Bordeaux (produced 1933), a stage success in London and New York.

Her detective fiction, written under the pen name Josephine Tey and frequently featuring the fictional investigator Inspector Grant, includes Miss Pym Disposes (1947); The Franchise Affair (1949), based on a real case from the 18th century; The Daughter of Time (1951), a historical novel dealing with Richard III's implication in the murder of his two young nephews; and The Singing Sands (1952).