The Daughter of Time (1951)

by Josephine Tey

The Daughter of Time is probably Josephine Tey’s most famous mystery book, and has routinely featured on lists of best-ever crime novels. Her detective, Inspector Alan Grant, is laid up in hospital and ends up solving one of the biggest historical mysteries of the 15th century while lying in bed. It’s about who killed two young princes in the Tower of London, the sons of Edward IV, who died in April 1483. The eldest of the two, aged 13, became Edward V. Richard, their uncle, was guardian, but instead took the throne himself, and is normally suspected of ordering the murders. The Daughter of Time is a lot of fun, and makes you want to read more about this period—which saw the end of the Wars of the Roses and the beginning of the Tudor dynasty—and about Richard III, whose body was recently found buried under a parking lot in Leicester.