Murder Most Royal (2020) by S. J. Bennett
Good Reads meta-data is 336 pages, rated 3.88 by 6784 litizens.
DNA: Brit; Species: Royalty.
Verdict: One liked it.
Tagline: Look what Santa Claus brought.
Members of the British royal family travel to Sandringham House on the Norfolk Coast for Christmas, where they have been many times before. The peace and quiet they seek is unsettled by a macabre discovery on the beach, teenage drug dealing, a hit and run accident or was it, and a death in odd circumstances. Sandringham sounds worse than Newtown on Saturday night.
While plod takes these events one at a time, with years of experience at the jigsaw puzzle of humanity, Her Majesty sees a whole, and sends forth her paladin, one time artillery officer Rozie to connect the dots.
Bennett makes the members of the royal family human, and in the main likeable. Similarly the local residents are several and varied. Nor are the police reduced to cardboard.
Still I niggle, Her Majesty seems to be in a hurry and has three direct confrontations that cut against her softy-softly approach. The sulky teenager who appears early on then disappears, and likewise the drug haul that misled the police also goes poof! There is also a reference to Greenland that had me consulting Google Earth to see if it made sense. Barely. Contrived.
Finally, I found it hard to keep the characters straight. Those with titles have three names: their aristocratic one, a birth name, and a nickname. It was like reading a Russian novel with patronymics, eponyms, retronymics, and nymbics.
For pedants only: Sandringham House is the personal and private property of Elizabeth Mountbatten née Windsor. It was purchased by her father and willed to her. Wikipedia says it has, get this, between 100 and 200 rooms! ‘Between.’ That made me wonder about all the staff. The maids, janitors, tradesmen to keep the place running. Then there are the grounds of the estate, which are extensive. Who pays them?
Third in the sequence and one hopes for a fourth in due course.