The Daughter of Time

1951, 1995 Scribner edition
Josephine Tey
The Daughter of Time
Original price $9.00, purchase price unknown
Worn paperback
B

The "title character" is truth, which is debatable.  Sometimes the passage of time can reveal the truth, but often it obscures it.  When it comes to Richard III, who knows?  Tey does make a compelling case that Henry VII, rather than his predecessor, killed "the Princes in the Tower," but there is a lot of leaping to conclusions by the detective Alan Grant and his American sidekick.  It's a fun read, whatever you decide.  This time, I particularly liked Tey's pastiches, including of historical fiction.  I kept thinking they were real.  But I suspect that The Sweat and the Furrow is from the genre that Gibbons was parodying in Cold Comfort Farm.  Getting back to the historical portions of the novel, Tey does a good job of keeping the major figures clear, even if she does sometimes oversimplify.  I think both Richard III and Henry VII were ruthless, but that doesn't necessarily mean either ordered the killing of small children.  And it's not necessary to blame Henry to get Richard off the hook, although I suppose a murder mystery has to have a definite killer.  At least Tey acknowledges she's not the first to suggest Richard's innocence, although she was the first in awhile.  (Remember, even Jane Austen had her doubts about Richard's villainy.)