SJ Bennett is up to the fourth book in Her Majesty the Queen Investigates series. It was launched with The Windsor Knot. You can order all the books in the series through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/409rZkN
The latest book in the series is A Death in Diamonds. While author Dana Stabenow reviews the new book below, it’s also recommended by staff of The Poisoned Pen, including owner Barbara Peters, John Charles, and blogger Lesa Holstine. Here’s the link to order the new book. https://bit.ly/409rZkN
Here’s Dana Stabenow’s review of A Death in Diamonds.
A Death in Diamonds
by S.J. Bennett
It’s 1957, twelve years after the end of World War II, and the second Elizabeth sits on the throne of England, a woman of thirty who swore to God to serve her nation her whole life long, a husband who struggles with finding a role as her consort, and two children. Who takes precedence, the woman, the wife, or the queen? (Spoiler alert: The Queen. Always and ever, the Queen.)
She is also, in this construct, a pretty good detective. Her public appearances abroad are being sabotaged, which sabotage could only be organized by someone within her closest circle. There has also been a double murder in Chelsea, one of the victims a member of a high end stable of prostitutes hired because of their resemblances to famous women, including her sister Margaret. Worse, the circumstances of the murders may implicate someone in the royal family.
Scotland Yard seems neither as enthusiastic or as capable as they should be in their pursuit of the murderers and Elizabeth is unfortunately beset by courtiers inherited from her father (nicknamed “the mustaches”) who are outwardly determined to protect her from every ill wind. She becomes aware that their tender concern might be more about concealing their master plan to keep the Queen from moving the throne into the twentieth century, instead keeping it and the United Kingdom safely mired in the imperial past.
The thing about the sabotage of her state visits was that it was an act against her job. It was a job she had sworn to do for the rest of her life, in Westminster Abbey, surrounded by the great and the good and watched by millions on television and, more importantly, God, and nobody on earth could take it more seriously than she did.
Bennett does a great job of writing about Elizabeth the woman as an attractive and intelligent and real human being, and ably depicts what must have been the constant tension between her public and private lives. There are other great characters, too, including Detective Sergeant Darbishire and typist and disgraced war hero Joan McGraw. The notes exchanged by Elizabeth and Joan are coded masterpieces worthy of Bletchley, Joan’s alma mater. MI5 gets involved and as is their wont manages to confuse everyone, except Elizabeth, of course.
Bennett does a wonderful job of mixing fact with fiction, displaying a level of craft comparable to the always superb Jane Austen mysteries by Stephanie Barron. Here Elizabeth, a jazz fan, is introduced to Duke Ellington.
The Queen beamed at him. “How wonderful to meet you, Mr. Ellington.”
“Likewise, ma’am.”
“Is this your first visit to London?” Philip asked him.
“No, sir…I remember I played four-hand piano with your uncle, the Duke of Kent.”
“Was he any good?”
“Not bad, for a prince.”
That meeting did happen, a year later, as Bennett says in her Afternotes. Like James R. Benn in his Billy Boyle series, Bennet writes a great and informative acknowledgment. Interesting characters who all learn and grow over the course of the narrative, some truly awful bad guys, lots of great settings (love the French bringing Elizabeth the Mona Lisa while she’s sitting at a banquet in the Louvre so she can see it for the first time), and a solid plot that makes nothing but sense, especially Elizabeth’s solving of it and identifying the murderer. Just remember, it’s all about the women. Elizabeth does, and enacts a truly Solomonian and entirely Elizabethan (twentieth century style) justice on the perpetrators. It is certainly justice for what they tried to do to Joan, and I want to believe that is part of the Queen’s motivation. Recommended.