The Murders of Richard III, by Elizabeth Peters

The Murders of Richard III will always have a special place in my heart. I read it when I was about 14 or so... it was the first Elizabeth Peters mystery I read, and started my lifelong fascination with Richard III.

It is not the first, but rather the second novel in the Jacqueline Kirby series, written by the prolific Elizabeth Peters.

Here are is the complete list:

The Seventh Sinner (1972)
Murders of Richard III (1974)
Die for Love (1984)
Naked Once More (1989)

Librarian Jacqueline Kirby is visiting London, and being squired around by Thomas Carter, a friend of hers and an American expatriate. Thomas is a member of a society that wishes to rehabilitate Richard III - Shakespeare's play has cast him as a villain who usurpred the throne from his nephew, and then had the rightful king, and the king's brother, smothered in the Tower of London. In actual fact it was probably Henry VII who ordered that dirty deed done.

In any event, Thomas and Jacqueline attend a houseparty, in which the guests, all who believe Richard to be innocent of the murders, dress up in costume of the period. One of them has found a document that they beleive will clear Richard's name. But as the party goes on, practical jokes, in the manner of the way Richard's alleged victims die, begin to occur.

Why...and who is behind it?

The portrait [of Richard III] had an odd effect on some people. Thomas Carter was one of them. He had seen it innumerable times; indeed, he could summon up those features in memory more clearly than he could those of his own father, who was enjoying an acrimonious eighth decade in Peoria, Illinois. Thomas could not explain the near-hypnoric spell cast by the painted features, but he sincerely hoped they were having the same effect on his companion. He had private reasons for wanting Jacqueline Kirby to develop an interest in Richard III, quondam king of England, who had met a messy death on the field of battle almost five fundred years earlier.

And
"I don't know! I'm sure the letter did exist. Buck couldn't have invented it out of whole cloth. But it's too damned fortuitous to have it turn up now, after all these years. The scholarly world and the press think we're a bunch of crackpots now. If we make a big public spectacle of this - as we are planning to do - and then some goateed expert strolls in and says, "You've been had, ladies and gents; this is Woolworth's best stationery..." You can see how idiotic we would look. And...maybe you won't understand this. But we honestly are concerned with a little matter of justice, even if it's five hundred years late. A fiasco like this..."

"...could hurt Richard's cause," said Jacqueline, as he hesitated. She spoke tentatively, as if the words were too bizarre to be uttered; but as she studied the flushed face of the man across the table, her own face changed. "My God. You really feel..."

"I guess it sounds silly," Thomas said, with no sign of anger. "I can't explain it. In part, it's the fun of an unsolved puzzle; in part, the famous Anglo-Saxon weakness for the underdog. But it's more than that. Do you remember what they wrote about Richard in the official records of the city of York, after they heard the news of Bosworth? "King Richaers, late mercifully reigning upon us...was piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this city." The men of Yorkshire knew him well; he had lived among them for many years. It took guts to write that epitaph with Henry Tudor on the throne and Richard's cause buried in a felon's grave at Leicester...If there is such a thing as charisma, maybe some people have an extra large dose. Enough to carry through five hundred years.