By Rhys Bowen

The author of the Molly Murphy and Constable Evan Evans mystery series presents her newest Royal Spyness novel. Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie of Glen Garry and Rannoch (Georgie for short) may be thirty-fourth in line for the British throne, but England is still in a depression following the Great War and she’s still stone broke. Learning to fend for herself is a new experience, but as Georgie learns to do without, she also learns to do for others – she hires herself out as a maid. Her cousin, Queen Mary, has no idea that Georgie must now work for a living (she would not be amused) and gives her a different kind of task – playing chaperone for a visiting princess of Bavaria in hopes that the young royal will lure her son, the Prince of Wales, away from that dreadful American woman, Mrs. Simpson. However, the lively young princess is a Royal Handful, and her unbridled enthusiasm soon lands both ladies in a pot of hot water when they are accidentally linked to a murder, then to the Communist Party and then to more murders - not to mention getting in between Georgie and the dashing Darcy O’Mara. With her dear ex-copper grandfather acting as her butler (so the princess doesn’t think she is the pauper that she is), Georgie tries to untangle the murderous mess before she and the princess inadvertently cause another world war. Written with an almost chick-lit tone but set in Interwar-period England, A Royal Pain is a fun-to-read mystery of the “cozy” genre.

Find it here in the SPL catalogue.

Reviewed September 8, 2008