Book Review: The Daughter of Time, the fifth Inspector Grant mystery, is widely acclaimed as one of the great mystery novels of all time. While I wouldn't go quite that far (as much as I love Josephine Tey), it fits the established pattern of each Grant adventure being better than the one before. This is the best yet. If you enjoy hissing at Richard III, if you're enchanted by the mystery of the two little princes in the Tower, if you're enamored of the Wars of the Roses or the Tudors, this is the detective novel for you. The Daughter of Time ("truth is the daughter of time" - Francis Bacon) is as much history as mystery and the better for being both. The immobile Grant is fed his archaic evidence by an energetic and enthused history student rushing between hospital and library. In many hands this would be on the dry side, but the author makes an almost wholly successful effort at injecting Grant's historical research with murder-mystery excitement. Tey is, as usual, a product of time and place and not perfectly politically correct (the Irish come in for a bit of a drubbing); at times Grant and his assistant seem a little too smug and come off as a little too self-righteous, but these are quibbles. The Daughter of Time is written with Tey's usual lapidary exposition and wit (" 'I've no patience with you,' she said patiently"). A steady theme is the unreliability of our historical accounts ("when you tell someone the true facts of a mythical tale they are indignant not with the teller but with you"). Tey finds and shares examples of historical fake news from Scotland, Wales, and America as part of the story. All in all, it's a notably entertaining and rewarding, if occasionally academic, reading experience. [4½★]
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