The Daughter of Time

“Truth is the daughter of time” - Francis Bacon.

That is the quote from which Josephine Tey takes the title for this, the fifth in her Inspector Grant series. Here we find Grant laid up in bed after a fall while chasing a thief. Bored and restless he is brought a collection of portraits by his actress friend Marta Hallard, and it is the one of Richard III that piques his interest. For he thinks it cannot be the face of a murderer. Thus begins an investigation from his sick bed, with the help of a young American researcher, Brent Carradine, into the facts surrounding the blackening of Richard's good name. Was he a villain? Did he really order the deaths of the Princes in the Tower?

I must admit that the first quarter of this book is slow going and I wondered where it was heading, but once Carradine starts uncovering the facts behind the accepted historical traditions the story really gets moving. Grant is methodical, his Policeman's brain assessing the facts dispassionately, getting to the heart of the matter. Tey spins a good yarn out of the historical material, despite Grant never leaving his hospital room.

The revelations, new to Grant and Carradine, are handled like a true murder mystery and you really start wanting Grant to clear Richard's name. It's a great little mystery novel of the old school. Great read.

This is called the best mystery book of all time, so I had to read it. Actually listen to it. It might have been better to read it physically. There were parts I got confused about the characters, but I liked it. I liked the way the mystery was taken on like a detective, knowing patterns of human nature. The evidence they lay out made sense. This made a very strong case for the red to rewrite history.