The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

A mystery book review

In The Daughter of Time, a Scotland Yard detective confined to a hospital bed suffers excruciating boredom until a medieval portrait captures his attention. Used to judging people's character by their faces, he ponders this one: "Someone used to great responsibility, and responsible in his authority. Someone too conscientious. A worrier; perhaps a perfectionist.... Someone, too, who had suffered ill-health as a child. He had that incommunicable, that indescribable look that childhood suffering leaves behind it ..." Turning over the print, he discovers the portrait is of King Richard III, accused throughout history of murdering his nephews, the "Princes in the Tower." Incredulous that a man with such a face could have committed such a crime, he undertakes a police-style investigation of the facts behind the 400-year-old mystery.

Josephine Tey was a pen name of Elizabeth MacKintosh, who wrote unconventional mysteries under the name Gordon Daviot as well. The Daughter of Time was almost her last novel before she died in 1952. (Her last, The Singing Sands, was published posthumously.) Her novel awakened popular interest in the centuries-old crime. Historians writing after the book's appearance were forced to reconsider the arguments for and against Richard, although few adopted her detective's conclusions. The controversy still rages. (1951, 206 pages)