This series of books for me are terribly British and celebrates everything about how unique we are as a nation and our ability to poke fun at ourselves as we all know the world around us is doing the same.
What can be more British than the Queen at Christmas? What can be more British than a murder mystery to while away the hours.
The book set within the last 8 years, clearly has much it can mention about Brexit, Prime Ministers and current girlfriends of royal princes. At Christmas it was well known that HM The Queen decamped to Sandringham, a house owned privately by her and where she spent over a month until her accession day. This year is no different, apart from the fact that her and Phillip are suffering from colds and flu, oh and a severed hand ends up on the beach next to the estate.
The severed hand has a signet ring on it and The Queen recognises it as belonging to Edward St Cyr, a neighbour and someone who used to play with Charles when he was a small boy. Not without his eccentricities, finding the rest of Edward and who actually committed the murder is going to keep the Queen and her APS Rozie, quite busy over the festive period.
Like any place, whether it be large or small, gossip and rumours abound even when you have Royalty as neighbours. With Rozie tasked to find out certain information, the Queen uses her unique position to question, influence and probe without anyone realising. The truth will always out. The Queen will help and no one will ever know. Or only those that need to know.
This book, this series, is just a delightful warm tribute to her late majesty and you can only but imagine that she would have found such a thing amusing. Of course we never know what really goes on, and if we did that would ruin the mystique and if this is as close as we can get with it then I am all for it and cannot wait for more.
For fans of cosy mysteries, historical fiction, royalty and everything British.
Thank you to the publisher via netgalley for the opportunity to read this book.
Murder Most Royal is out now.
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