A brilliant book about a historical mystery, and an even more brilliant book about "Truth - the daughter of time". What a great idea to have a Scotland Yard detective, who can't leave his hospital bed, "investigate" a murder that was committed 400 years ago. What an elegant entry to the story, to have Alan Grant - a man with great interest in faces - distract himself over a set of portraits, only to get hooked by the face of a man who looks much too nice to belong to a hunchbacked monster that is alleged of having killed his nephews (the princes in the tower). On the surface, this novel is an entertaining discourse about King Richard III and his time. All set in a hospital room, with nurses, friends and a doctor taking turns in visiting the patient, lending him history books, discussing school history or bringing in news from recent findings from the British Museum, the scenes and dialogues are almost like a theatre play (and indeed, Grant's wonderful friend Marta is a theatre actress, and so is the lover of his "research assistant" Carradine). Below the surface - behind the stories about Richard III - the main subject of the book is "historical truth" and how it is shaped, distorted and consolidated by people. Once Grant and Carradine have found out the truth, they also find out that this truth had been known (and written down) long before they re-discovered it. As yet, this truth had left little trace in the common stories about the hunchbacked monster Richard III. A key sentence is when Grant suggests to Carradine that if he can't be the first to unveil the truth, he could fight for truth to become the common story: "If you can't be a pioneer, what's wrong with leading a crusade?" (p.179). ( )