The Daughter of Time

With the help of a young American researcher named Brent Carradine, Grant begins examining the evidence as if it were a modern police case. He reads histories and contemporary records, checks dates, asks who benefited and looks at what people actually did rather than what was later written about them. He finds that the popular story of Richard as a monster comes largely from writers working under the next royal family, who had good reasons to blacken his name.

The novel takes place almost entirely in Grant's hospital room, with visits from his friend Marta, an actress, his sergeant and the nurses, whose personalities add humor. The puzzle is intellectual rather than action-filled, and readers learn a great deal about the Wars of the Roses along the way. Tey also explores how historical myths are created and repeated, an idea captured in the title, which comes from an old saying about truth. Historians still debate the case, but the book remains a classic and was once voted the greatest mystery novel of all time by British crime writers.

Clever, original and absorbing. About 208 pages in the Touchstone paperback.