In the end, you get to see all the evidence and make up your own mind.Ī recent critic said that this was the single most overrated book in mystery fiction, on the grounds that everyone knew the answer already, but I think he misses the point (and most Americans have an understandably hard time just keeping the British monarchs straight, much less having opinions about their actions).

His conclusions about the case won't be a surprise to anyone who has read the historical literature, but the story is gripping and the complex logic is first-rate. With the help of a young American researcher, he delves into the case as a detective, piling up evidence and trying on theories in quick succession. By chance, he sees a portrait of Richard III, and immediately feels that this face could not belong to a tyrant who could callously murder his two young nephews to achieve the throne. These days, people just get a cast slapped on, rent a pair of crutches, and off they go - but in Grant's day, they had to lie flat on their backs for weeks and weeks.

The premise is that Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard is lying in a hospital bed, bored out of his mind while recuperating from a broken leg. This book reverses those terms, with challenging results. I suppose you might call it a historical-method mystery novel, if there were such a genre: after all, one of the most famous historiographical works is called The Historian as Detective. This novel is 'historical' because it looks at an actual event and tries to make sense of it as a historian might. 'Most 'historical' mystery novels are called that because they are set in some past time and place, and the author is supposed to furnish the book with the appropriate period clothes, language, mores, and so on.

The daughter of time tey