A popular fictional detective frequently beseeches his energetic sidekick to stop running around looking for clues, and instead to sit back and use his “little grey cells” to think about the facts of the case. Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time takes this quite literally, being crime-solving via documentary analysis. Our detective is confined to his hospital bed with a spinal injury, so the only running around done in this book is people scurrying to send and deliver telegrams for him, to go to and from bookshops, and to go and look things up in the British Library.

There are many elements in here that touch on previous Book Club entries, which makes me hopeful that you will all enjoy this. Firstly, the flavour is unequivocally British with flavours of Wodehouse and Agatha Christie – snappy repartee, lively characters incisively evoked, a sense of coziness, and telegram conversations. For those who enjoyed the politics and olde Englishness of The Winter King, we get Wars of the Roses history (accessibly described). And for fans of Hilary Mantel, Thomas More gets a kicking.

But back to the facts of the case. The crime in question is almost 500 years old. The criminal: Richard III (boo hiss, reminds me I need to watch the Ian McKellen film again). Did he do it? By the end of the book we can certainly be sure of what side the author is on, and the process of the investigation is enthralling. It certainly makes its arguments far more elegantly than did recent film The Lost King. I’m curious to find out what everyone reading here makes of the case.

The Solute Book Club – easy to join! Just read The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey and watch this space for a discussion article at the end of the month.