The Daughter of Time

I have been reading a lot of books this summer. A friend challenged me to see which of us could read the most pages from May to August (when we go back to school). Currently we're neck and neck at a bit over 4,000 words read!

Since I have been consuming books in such large quantities, I thought it would be fun to review some of them for you. I've been reading such varied books as Crazy Love by Francis Chan, Alpha Centauri by Robert Siegel, Father Brown books by G. K. Chesterton, some Janette Oke books, and also I even started the Harry Potter series (which I will definitely post about once I've finished).

But there was one book that I read that I knew I must share with you. I had actually read it some years ago, but only had a vague memory of intrigue and suspense with a bit of humor... and a very satisfying ending. When I read it this time I remembered why I liked it so much.

The book is called The Daughter of Time, and it's written by Josephine Tey (which, by the way, is a pseudonym, though I'm not sure why the author chose to have one). It is a mystery, but a very different sort of mystery than you usually read. The detective is not trying to figure out "whodunit" (at least not at first), the crime is not current (in fact, it is centuries old), the setting is a hospital room, and the case doesn't even seem like one at first.

To sum the story up in one sentence, The Daughter of Time is a story about a detective ("Inspector Grant") who decides to solve the mystery of the little princes in the tower. He comes upon this mystery because of a picture of Richard the Third, which to him does not look like the picture of an evil man who would murder his own nephews who were merely children. So, he begins to investigate, and uncovers a deeper mystery than he could have known.

I love this book because of the way it challenges you to think and really dig deep before simply accepting history books as "facts." When this book was written, it sparked many people to unearth the truth on Richard the Third for themselves. The book is also a fun (and rather quick) read, though the references to almost all of the royal lines in the War of the Roses can get very confusing sometimes. (Why did there have to be so many Henrys?) I also love the style of language the author uses: it's witty and engaging, and yet also demonstrates a masterful use of language.


The title of the book comes from the Francis Bacon quote: "Truth is rightly named the daughter of time, not of authority." I would encourage you to read the book and decide for yourself - do you believe that? Or does truth withstand time - even if our perception of it does not?