From the Bookshelf of Reading the Detectives…

The Daughter of Time (Inspector Alan Grant, #5)

Josephine Tey

Start date: June 1, 2023

Finish date: June 30, 2023

Discussion: Group reads

Why we're reading this: This classic was joint winner of a group poll.
[close] This classic was joint winner of a group poll.

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Group reads

* Nominations for December 2025 group read
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* Oct 25: Murder Included (#1 D.I. Price) by Joanna Cannan
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What Members Thought

Oct 03, 2017 Cat {Pemberley and Beyond} rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: wow, british-literature, book-riot, non-fiction, crime-thriller, set-in-london, historical-fiction, set-in-yorkshire, 2017-reading-challenge

My partner bought this on a whim after it appeared in a Listener crossword. I read it and had my socks blown off!

This is one of those unique novels that shakes one's concept of what can be done within a genre. I whole-heartedly recommend it to all. ...more

12 likes · Like · see review

Feb 02, 2018 Julie Durnell rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: england-uk, mystery

Amazing! I do not know much on the Plantagenet/York/Tudor/Lancaster ancestry but thankfully my copy had two family trees at the back that were very helpful in keeping everyone straight. The research that went into this must have been a huge task. The thought process of a laid up police inspector attempting to unravel a centuries old murder was a thrilling tale!

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Aug 23, 2015 Gina Dalfonzo rated it it was ok · review of another edition

"Read Josephine Tey," they said. "It'll be fun," they said.

Well, it WAS fun, at first. I absolutely loved Brat Farrar. Unfortunately, every book of Tey's that I've read after that (three in all) has been a letdown, this one most of all.

In large part, this disappointment is due to her bizarre belief that you can discern the essential qualities of a person based on physical appearance alone. Apparently she never heard the old saw about books and covers. The worst example I've seen is in The Franch "Read Josephine Tey," they said. "It'll be fun," they said.

Well, it WAS fun, at first. I absolutely loved Brat Farrar. Unfortunately, every book of Tey's that I've read after that (three in all) has been a letdown, this one most of all.

In large part, this disappointment is due to her bizarre belief that you can discern the essential qualities of a person based on physical appearance alone. Apparently she never heard the old saw about books and covers. The worst example I've seen is in The Franchise Affair, in which her heroine blithely declares that people whose eyes are a certain shade of blue are always promiscuous (!), and turns out to be right. No one says anything quite that ridiculous in The Daughter of Time, but the problem there is that the whole book springs from the detective, Grant's, opinion that Richard III looks so noble and good in a particular painting that he couldn't possibly be a murderer.

(IIRC, the possibility that the painter might have been less than accurate in his depiction never even crosses Grant's mind.)

Still, the resulting investigation into history is interesting, and might have been a lot more interesting and enjoyable if Grant and his co-researcher hadn't turned so smug over the whole thing, and so contemptuous of anyone who doesn't support their theory. It really gets quite annoying. Their complete dismissal of all historians as a group is arrogant in the extreme, and don't get me started on their "sainted Thomas More" routine. Granted, I've long had a soft spot for Thomas More, so I'm not unbiased here. But I honestly would be irritated by such treatment even of a historical character that I didn't like. (And besides, I'm not at all committed to believing More's opinion of Richard III; personally I don't care one way or the other whether it was correct.) The way they can't mention More without a verbal sneer -- even after discovering that he probably didn't write the account they're debunking -- looks more like a vendetta than the result of an honest investigation. It even gets in the way of their stated commitment to accuracy and truth. For example, there's this:

"I wouldn't have the sainted More as a present."
"I think we ought to remember that it is John Morton's account and not the sainted More's."
"The sainted More sounds better. Besides, he liked the thing well enough to be copying it out."

Excuse me?? What happened to truth, justice, and the British way?

Except for the fact that Tey (rather ironically) pays lip service to the concept of reverse psychology at one point, I would have believed that she'd never heard of that idea, either. She so obviously doesn't understand that if you continue to pile on a character in season and out of season, you run the risk of swinging the audience's sympathy over to that character. She certainly would have made me consider becoming allegiant to More, if I hadn't already been.

I wouldn't have spent so much time on More except that the approach to him is so typical of the book's general approach -- slipshod and largely based on emotion and sometimes even mean-spirited. And so little aware of its own faults. When Grant scolded himself for "beginning to be partisan," I nearly choked. Beginning! The whole book reeks of partisanship. Maybe Tey made out a decent case for Richard; I don't know enough British history to be certain. But by the time the book ended, I didn't care. I'd lost interest.

The worst of it is, Tey is such a talented writer. She can turn a phrase beautifully or create a wonderful characterization when she wants to. Which makes it all the more disappointing when she gets too caught up in her own ideas and too insistent on hammering them into the reader's head to bother with good writing. Perhaps her detective should have taken a tip from a far greater fictional detective than he, who once said: "In any investigation, my Bunter, it is most damnably dangerous to have a theory." ...more

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Feb 14, 2018 Bev rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: british-mystery, audionovel, mystery, vintage-mystery, mount-tbr-2018, historical-mystery

The Daughter of Time (1951) was, I think, the very first novel I read by Josephine Tey (aka Elizabeth Mackintosh) long ago from my hometown library. It was also the first historically-based mystery that I ever read. I have to admit that at the time I read it (as a preteen) I wasn't a particularly well-versed in British history. I was aware of Richard III and that he was supposed to have done away with his nephews, but that's about it. Not unlike most of the characters in Tey's book. The nurses a The Daughter of Time (1951) was, I think, the very first novel I read by Josephine Tey (aka Elizabeth Mackintosh) long ago from my hometown library. It was also the first historically-based mystery that I ever read. I have to admit that at the time I read it (as a preteen) I wasn't a particularly well-versed in British history. I was aware of Richard III and that he was supposed to have done away with his nephews, but that's about it. Not unlike most of the characters in Tey's book. The nurses and the doctor and those who visit Inspector Alan Grant all have been raised on history books (and Shakespeare) that portrayed Richard as the evil uncle who ruthlessly killed off two children so he could be king.

That first reading--I was absorbed in Inspector Grant's historical detecting, an activity he takes up when he is forced by an accident to stay in hospital for what seems by today's standards an inordinate amount of time. He's found every pattern possible in the ceiling above him. He's tried all the books his friends have brought him and found them wanting (the books, not the friends). He's bored out of his mind in the world of the 1950s with no in-room television, no phone, no laptop or cellphone to play on all day. Until his friend Marta brings in a bundle of postcards with faces/portraits on them and suggests he do a bit of detecting. Each picture represents a famous "mystery."

Grant is quite taken with one particular portrait of a sensitive and noble-looking man. Before he turns it over to see whose portrait it is, Grant--known for his ability to sum people up by their appearance--tries to determine if the man belongs on the bench or in the dock and comes down firmly for the bench. He's very surprised to discover that he is looking at Richard III and begins to doubt his abilities. But, then, none of the people to whom he shows the portrait identify the man as evil--some think he looks like he's suffered; the doctor suggests that the man has a childhood illness; Grant's subordinate agrees that the man looks judicial. It's only after they are told that it's Richard that any of them decide, "Oh, yes. Now I can see the evil/greed/baseness in his face."

Grant becomes so interested in Richard that he gets Marta to find him a researcher at the British Library and together Grant and Brent Carradine go on a historical journey to discover the real Richard. The aim is to find out what made a man who looks like Richard turn into a child-murderer. But what they discover is that history is written by the victors and that there is much to doubt about the official story. Richard was a good steward, a brave soldier when necessary, and loyal to his brother, the King. There is little evidence that he was the greedy, grasping man history had painted him. In fact, there was evidence that he was a popular King during his brief reign. So, what really happened? If Richard didn't kill the Princes in the Tower (or have them killed), then who did?

It was a bit disappointing to find out at the end of the book, that none of Grant and Carradine's discoveries was big news--that historians already knew that there was doubt about Richard's guilt. It's a shame that Tey (and fictionally, Carradine) wasn't able to produce this bombshell and set everyone right. But--after getting over that--it was interesting to look at the ways police detection and historical research are similar. Some of the same questions that benefit Grant in his modern cases (Who benefits? What was everyone doing at the time? etc) were integral to discovering the mysteries of the historical case. Of course, trying to find answers hundreds of years later is a little more difficult. But good research and know what documents to examine for answers go a long way.

This second reading* was just as entertaining as the first--even though I already knew what they found out and that it wasn't the big bombshell discovery that Carradine (and I) thought it was. I paid more attention to the research methods and the details than I did so many years ago. I enjoyed the little discoveries--the pieces found in letters and brief mentions in historical accounts that help them build their case for Richard's innocence. Not strictly speaking a straight detective novel, but it definitely helped get me interested in historical novels and in finding more Josephine Tey mysteries. ★★★★★ then and ★★★★★ now.

[*I actually listened to the BBC Radio version read by Paul Young because I can't figure out what I did with the hard copy I bought myself sometime after I read it from the library--younger Bev forgot to record the date bought on this one. The audio version was excellent.]

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks. ...more

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Jan 28, 2018 Janet rated it really liked it

Tey's book is inventive. The prose is clever and humorous. The characters are well drawn and enjoyable. The unraveling of the mystery of the disappearance of the two heirs to the throne takes us through history and propaganda. Thoroughly entertaining. ...more

1 like · Like · see review