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allyriadayne 's review for:
The Daughter of Time
by Josephine Tey
I'm not really one to read these short murder mystery novels, but when it was suggested to me that this one had a fair bit of history and Richard III I just had to read it and I'm glad I did! Richard III is one of my favorite subjects to read about.
The book is set around inspector Alan Grant's time recovering from an injury in a hospital where he's understandably bored of the minutiae of recovering, as he can't go up (I never really understood if he had his leg broken or what) to Scotland Yard and solve crimes, an actress friend of his ignites the flame for solving one of the most popular mysteries in British history, that it, the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower. From then on, Alan Grant, with help of the hospital staff and friends, begin to uncover who really was Richard III and what happened to his nephews.
Spoiler alert, but not really: Richard was innocent and the Princes may or may have not being killed during Tudor times. This was no surprise for me so it was a pretty straightfoward book, but what I really liked was the sort of domestic? I don't know what to call it, way Josephine Tey told the story. For me, it didn't feel like I was reading a mystery book, but one where a character who happened to be a detective found an interest in a bit of history and went on to read about it more. I mean, the search for information was done in an organic way, as one does when interested in a particular historic subject, in the way one tell friends about something interesting. Nonetheless, in some parts, I could tell that format wouldn't work for a much longer book, as it turned quite old after a bit. It was exposition after exposition after exposition.
I guess what it really was about was how there's no actual "official" history or a factual one: there were people, contemporary or not, who told a version of events and other people took it as truth and other that don't. Basically, don't take history at face value because truth is the daughter of time.
The book is set around inspector Alan Grant's time recovering from an injury in a hospital where he's understandably bored of the minutiae of recovering, as he can't go up (I never really understood if he had his leg broken or what) to Scotland Yard and solve crimes, an actress friend of his ignites the flame for solving one of the most popular mysteries in British history, that it, the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower. From then on, Alan Grant, with help of the hospital staff and friends, begin to uncover who really was Richard III and what happened to his nephews.
Spoiler alert, but not really: Richard was innocent and the Princes may or may have not being killed during Tudor times. This was no surprise for me so it was a pretty straightfoward book, but what I really liked was the sort of domestic? I don't know what to call it, way Josephine Tey told the story. For me, it didn't feel like I was reading a mystery book, but one where a character who happened to be a detective found an interest in a bit of history and went on to read about it more. I mean, the search for information was done in an organic way, as one does when interested in a particular historic subject, in the way one tell friends about something interesting. Nonetheless, in some parts, I could tell that format wouldn't work for a much longer book, as it turned quite old after a bit. It was exposition after exposition after exposition.
I guess what it really was about was how there's no actual "official" history or a factual one: there were people, contemporary or not, who told a version of events and other people took it as truth and other that don't. Basically, don't take history at face value because truth is the daughter of time.