Stevie‘s review of Her Royal Spyness (A Royal Spyness Mystery, Book 1) by Rhys Bowen
Cosy Mystery published by Berkley 1 Jul 08
I’m assuming this book is being (re)issued in one or more new formats, since review copies were floating about last month. Anyway, this is a new-to-me author and series in a subgenre I love (cosy mysteries set between the two world wars with down-on-their-luck female aristocratic protagonists), so here goes…
Georgie – Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie – is the only daughter of the Duke of Glen Garry and Rannoch, himself the son of Queen Victoria’s least attractive daughter. Georgie’s mother – her father’s second wife – was an actress who got bored of being a penniless duchess very rapidly and has been working her way through rich men abroad ever since. Georgie’s half-brother is now the duke, after their father committed suicide (he shot himself deliberately, in spite of being hopeless at hitting game on official shoots), and he and his wife have decided they can no longer support Georgie and must marry her off post-haste.
Georgie’s having none of it and takes herself off to the family’s London house, where she begins to learn domestic chores with the help of her one surviving grandparent – a cockney ex-copper. Sacked from her first real job, at Harrods, when her mother breezes through and they have a slight falling out, Georgie decides to set up an agency that opens up and airs houses for nobility visiting London with minimal servants. She also meets Darcy O’Mara, the son of an impoverished Irish peer, who lives off his wits and gate-crashes exclusive parties for the free food. Meanwhile, the Queen wants Georgie to spy on her Cousin David and that awful, married, American woman he seems to be falling for.
Several misadventures later, Georgie is in the thick of things with a Frenchman (who claims to have won the entire family fortune from her father) having been inconveniently murdered in the bath of the London house, her brother arrested as the chief murder suspect, her favourite of her mother’s former paramours in a coma, and someone apparently trying to kill her. Oh, and Darcy may be trying to seduce her. Or he may be a crook. He may even be a killer.
I had an idea who the murderer might be from fairly early on, but it was fun trying to find out how the dead Frenchman fit into each suspect’s life and also watching Georgie cope with the problems life throws at her. She knows that she’s in a better position than a lot of other people, including her grandfather, but it would be easier for her to make her own way in the world if she didn’t have a title and some inconveniently important relatives.
The book feels like it’s been written by someone who really knows their era and the associated class issues of the period. My one niggle is that it feels very much like the first book in a series. That said, I really want to read the next book to see what Georgie’s going to get herself mixed up in next and whether she and Darcy will ever get beyond sharing the occasional kiss.
Grade: B
Summary:
Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, 34th in line for the throne, is flat broke. She’s bolted Scotland, her greedy brother, and her fish-faced betrothed for London. The place where she’ll experience freedom, learn life lessons aplenty, do a bit of spying for HRH – oh, and find a dead Frenchman in her tub. Now her new job is to clear her long family name.
No excerpt available.
Other books in this series:
