Saturday 19 January 2013

Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

Started: 12 Jan 2013
Finished: 16 Jan 2013
Pages: 206

I'd never heard of Josephine Tey until I picked up this book in a second-hand bookstore.  But she's apparently also one of the classic authors of the British golden age of detective fiction.  Daughter of Time was published in 1951, the last of her 10 or so books.

This is an unusual mystery:  the detective spends the entire novel flat on his back in a hospital bed and never meets the criminal or any of the principals in the case.  How could he?  Everyone involved has been dead for more than 400 years.

The detective's day job is at Scotland Yard.  But he needs something to do while he recovers from an injury, and ends up investigating the story of Richard III and the Princes in the Tower with the help of some history books and an assistant with time to kill in the British Library.  He approaches the historical puzzle using the same techniques he would in reviewing a modern case.

The end result is a very entertaining read that will have you googling for additional information about the Plantagenets and Tudors.


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