The First Time I Read Josehpine Tey: Welcome Kathleen Delaney

A couple of weeks ago a friend gave me a book to read that she thought I'd enjoy. Women of Mystery: The Lives and Works of Notable Women Crime Novelists by Martha Hailey Dubose. How had that one escaped me?!  Just a few pages into the book, I began adding to my must-read list. This collection of short bios of women mystery writers from the Golden Age to the present is a book every female mystery writer should read. I already knew a lot about Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, P. D. James, and Anne Perry, and vaguely about Ruth Rendell, Mary Higgins Clark, and Patricia Cornwall. I knew scant little about the others. One author intrigued me: Josephine Tey, creator of the Inspector Alan Grant series. So, when my guest today, Kathleen Delaney, sent me her post about the impression Tey made with her mystery, The Daughter of Time, my ears perked up. This was the validation I needed to find a copy of this inspirational mystery. Read what Kathleen has to say.

I don’t remember the first time I read The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, but I do remember the impression it made on me.

I grew up reading a lot of historical fiction, and a great deal of that was English historical fiction. The War of the Roses was as familiar to me as the Revolutionary war, I could name the wives of Henry V111 in order, and knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Richard 111, the last of the Plantagenets, was a murderer. There was no mystery about that.

Only, there was.

By all rights, debunking the myth that Richard killed the little princes should be a dry tome, full of dreary facts, old family trees exceeded in dullness only by the chapter in the bible known as the “begats”.

But it’s not.

It is as exciting a mystery story as you’ll find, filled with villainy, love, hate, lust, envy, and murder. The plot twists in and out as Inspector Grant, confined to bed with a shattered leg, decides to look into the centuries old crime and we follow along as mesmerized as if by the most current thriller even though our detective never leaves his bed and the villain in the piece is never  convicted. It is a puzzle, a murder and a tragedy, but it’s also one of the most beautifully written mysteries I’ve ever read. And it’s all true, the story of Richard, the research that went into proving he couldn’t have killed his nephews, why he has been reviled down the centuries, all told in beautiful language and a story telling ability that refuses to let you put the book down.

I re-read it to remind myself what great story telling really is.

Kathleen Delaney sets her books in Central California where she lived for over twenty years, working as a real estate broker and raising the last of her five children along with numerous dogs, cats, horses and other critters. Her first series, the Ellen McKenzie real estate mysteries, has been praised by Kirkus, Library Journal, Publisher’s Weekly among others. The 3^rd book, And Murder for Dessert, was named a Notable Mystery by Booksense, a nomination made by booksellers.

Purebred Dead, the first book in her new series, the Mary McGill canine mysteries, will be released August 1 2015 by Severn House. It has been released in England to rave reviews.

Kathleen lives in Georgia with two dogs and a grouchy cat near two of her grandchildren who asked to be in one of her books. Two children with their names appear in Purebred Dead.

www.kathleendelaney.net