The primary theme of The Daughter of Time is the tension between truth and legend; history and propaganda; character and reputation. The inciting incident is that Detective Alan Grant cannot reconcile his instinctive impression of Richard III based on his portrait, with the terrible crime he is supposed to have committed (to be along for the ride with this book, it is necessary to accept at face value the premise that the artist has perfectly captured Richard’s face – if we do, and we also accept Grant’s Theory of Faces, then it’s off to the races). He demands of all his visitors that they examine the anonymised face, and the responses they provide are a clever way of beginning to establish the book’s version of Richard III, as each perceives a different characteristic based on their professional backgrounds.

This inconsistency leads Grant first to a children’s history reader, and then to Thomas More’s The Life of Richard III, where the first major battle lines between historical truth and received wisdom are drawn, as Grant realises that Thomas More is not a primary source, and that he needs to know the things that Richard did rather than what was said about him. The book brings up other, more recent, examples of a convenient and comfortable legend overrunning truth, emphasising that this is a wider phenomenon than just Richard and his nephews: the Boston Tea Party, the Covenanters in Scotland, the delightfully-named Tonypandy.

When Grant acquires his young ‘looker-upper’ Brent Carradine, he tells him that what suspects do is far more important than what they say or what others say about them. Truth may be the daughter of time, but it also a blood relation to actions taken, and it’s the detailing of when and where the major players were at crucial times, what appointments and payments were made to whom, and who was allowed freedom of movement and not, that make the case for Richard’s innocence within the book so compelling.

While the focus on action revealing character (paging Wallflower) is the heart of Grant and Carradine’s investigation, it’s also one of the narrative devices that makes the book such an engaging read. While the characters we meet are afforded perfunctory physical descriptions, it is their specific behaviours that give them such vivid life. Marta Hallard is generous and self-centred: taking the initiative to find Grant an entertaining pastime via interrupting and inconveniencing another acquaintance; the ‘flattering deliberation’ with which she selects baked goods from Mrs Tinker – who is so thoroughly conjured up via references to her ‘Blue’, her aversion to pawn shops, and her fastidiousness regarding the newspapers (only the juiciest murders make the cut). Grant’s nurses are given nicknames based on their physical appearances but calling Nurse Darroll ‘the Amazon’ and ‘the Statue of Liberty’ makes far less of an impression than the fact that she has kept her old schoolbooks. Brent Carradine, the ‘woolly lamb’, is the only character we get to know via telling more than showing, as he gets to explain his life story and motivations to Grant. Even here, however; is action: Brent didn’t just tell Atlanta Shergold he loved her and then sit back and wait – he bought a ticket to England, got himself a job there, and joined her. And he’s going to write that book. As Alan Grant is summing up the findings of his investigation, he uses the phrase: “Salient characteristic as indicated by his actions”. He is using it in reference to his two historical prime suspects, but Josephine Tey could well have been using it as her own mantra while writing this book.

In the end though, is it enough that Grant and Carradine are convinced, against the weight of received wisdom, popular opinion, children’s history readers, Thomas More, Shakespeare, and Olivier? There are echoes of Terry Pratchett’s The Truth: “A lie can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on.” – the truth just is, but lies have purpose and momentum.