Rating: 
Summary: Essential reading for anyone who likes history...
Review: ...Or for anyone who thinks that they don't.What happens when a bored detective meets a postcard of an evil man? What happens when he decides that the man doesn't look so evil? A fascinating search into revisionist history, that's what! Alan Grant, detective extraordinaire, is laid up in the hospital when he comes across a picture of Richard III. You know, the ugly, hunchbacked guy who murdered his nephews, usurped their throne, and then yelled "My kingdom for a horse!" before dying his much-deserved death at the hands of Henry VII. The only problem is that Alan, who is never wrong about a face, thinks that Richard looks like a pretty decent guy. With the help of a few intrepid assistants who have access to the outside world, he decides to unravel the mystery of the Princes in the Tower. He must first work through 500 years of propaganda, lies, and questionable historical research. Is this book the end-all of the pro-Richard v. anti-Richard debate? No. It's not a traditional history, and should not be taken as such. It is a very fun detective story that opens up a fascinating window of how and why historians work, and will inspire anyone who reads it to think twice before taking any history at face value. Although anyone who loves history will adore this book, I think that it would also be a great book for someone who DOESN'T like history, such as a high school student who is bored to tears trying to memorize lists of names and dates. This book is a fun and quick read that shows how history is not quite as dry or as simple as our textbooks always taught us.
Rating: 
Summary: The Correct Portrait
Review: The mystery of the two small nephews of Richard III of England, supposedly murdered on his orders, has become the stuff of British history. Richard has come down to us as an evil monarch, most notably through Shakespeare's eponymous drama and the writings of Thomas More. But Shakespeare wrote his play based on More's book, and More was hardly a reliable eyewitness to events, being only five years old when they happened. In this highly original novel, Josephine Tey explores the mystery of whodunit from the point of view of a fictional detective, Alan Grant, laid up from a bad fall and bored out of his gourd; Grant tackles the problem from the cui bono standpoint, namely, who benefitted most from the young princes' murder? It surely wasn't Richard, who probably had more to lose than to gain from their deaths; but it did benefit the one whom Tey strongly suspects did have the princes put out of the way, one who had no legitimate claim to the crown at all. Grant and his young American research associate, Brent Carradine, work out the puzzle step by step, coming to a conclusion that satisfies them both. Whether or not it will satisfy the reader will depend on if the reader can let go of some preconceptions that have become engraved in stone. Grant asks himself, can 400,000 history books be wrong? They probably can, given that history is written by the winners, and Richard III ended his days as one of history's major losers. If Richard was indeed innocent, then whoever is guilty of having the princes murdered had everything to gain from traducing Richard's reputation to secure his own place in history and on the British throne. Tey's book is a well-written, engaging detective novel shedding light in some of the darker corners of the history of the kings of Britain.
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