Linda's Reviews > The Daughter of Time

I was given The Daughter of Time as a present from a friend/colleague; I have read none of the other books in the series, nor anything else by Josephine Tey, so I had no idea what I was getting into. It was also an older edition, so I'll admit I was a little biased against it—while I deal with older books as part of my research as a musicologist, for my recreational reading I tend toward the latest releases. But from the beginning, I caught the dry, English wit (This colleague and I met at a conference on British music, so he knew I'd at least appreciate that), and I settled in to the slightly antiquated vocabulary while chuckling at obsolete customs (cigarettes in the hospital?! Welcome to the 1950s!).

The plot: Detective Alan Grant is laid up in the hospital, having fallen through a trapdoor in pursuit of a criminal during his previous case. He had broken several bones throughout his body and was confined to a bed in the hospital during his recovery. As such, he was quite bored. A friend gave him a supply of books, but Grant turned his nose up at the cliched novels. The friend also sent a few photographs of portraits, so he pondered whether some people were destined to become criminals due to their physical makeup, and whether he, a detective, could spot criminality in people's faces. So, he went through the portraits trying to figure out what each subject did in their life, when he came to the very kind face of Richard III—one of England's historical villains, who allegedly killed his two nephews when they were mere boys. The tragic story of the Two Princes, murdered by their crazy uncle/king, was even a fixture in school history books. The disparity between how Richard's face looked and how history said he acted bothered Grant enough that it became his project, something to occupy his detective mind while on leave. He even met with an American historian, studying this period in England.

Together, Grant and Carradine (the historian) find that there was no evidence that Richard III was a murderer, and that the murder of his nephews made no sense—yes, they were ahead of him in the line of succession, but there were several others before him as well, and surely he didn't mean to kill ALL of them, right? As they dig deeper, they find all sorts of discrepancies that indicate the sheer unlikelihood of Richard III murdering anybody, as well as a viable suspect who might have actually committed the murder. Of course, with the murders having happened in the 15th century, there was no way to find new evidence, but they still looked into contemporary histories, diaries, financial records of the time to solidify the facts. They also traced the origin of the rumor that Richard was a murderer and found it popped up long after the murders were said to have happened.

I eventually realized that the characters' research into the past to overturn a solidly-ingrained fiction is what inspired my friend to send this specific book to me. I write a blog in which I investigate famous stories in music history and debunk them as necessary—tales like Beethoven chopping off the legs of his piano to feel the sound wave in the floor (he never did this) or the riot at the premiere of The Rite of Spring (it was apparently less violent in initial reports and grew moreso in the retelling). Since Grant and Carradine occupied themselves with something similar, it really did make for good reader/book synergy. I am left with one final mystery, however, something I perhaps missed in the text:

Who/what was "the daughter of time"?