The Nature of Things

Long ago, in what now seems like another lifetime, I read a lot of Josephine Tey's books and admired her clever plots and superb writing. Last year, I reacquainted myself with her writing by rereading my favorite book of hers, The Daughter of Time . It gave me an appetite for reading more. When I was reading her books in the past, to the best of my recollection, I never read this one. And I think I would have remembered for it is a devilishly clever tale. It's the fourth in her series of books featuring Inspector Grant. This time he is sent to the remote English village of Salcott St Mary to investigate the disappearance of a young man. Leslie Searle was a uniquely attractive man who was an ultra-fashionable portrait photographer from America. He was famous for taking pictures of actors and actresses, including some of Hollywood's big stars. He was talented and so good looking that he turned heads wherever he went. But why did he go to this backwater village? He claimed a c...

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey My rating: 5 of 5 stars I first read The Daughter of Time long ago in my callow youth. I can't recall much about that first reading experience. I don't think it made much of an impression on me. I was not well-versed in English history and knew little of the Plantagenets, the Wars of the Roses, or the Tudors except what I had gleaned from Shakespeare, so there was very little background for my understanding of what Josephine Tey was doing with this novel. Since that long ago time, I have read dozens of books about that period of history, especially during the past couple of years when it has been something of an obsession of mine. The result is that I'm now much better equipped to follow Tey's plot and the reasoning of her protagonist Inspector Alan Grant. When I ran across a reference to her book recently, I was intrigued and decided it was time to read it again. I'm very glad that I did. The plot of the book is that Inspecto...