Well crumble my crumpets, that was cute and cozy!
Author S.J. Bennett has taken your standard, garden-variety, death-by-autoerotique-asphyxiation mystery and cranked it up a notch by having none other than Queen Elizabeth II play Nancy Drew to solve it. And what readers get are delightful exchanges like this one between Her Majesty and her hubs, Prince Philip:
“Lilibet, did you hear the man was nude?”
“Yes, actually, I did.”
“Strung up like a Tory MP. There’s a word for it. What is it? Auto-sex something?”
“Autoerotic asphyxiation,” the Queen said grimly. She had Googled it on her iPad.
“That’s the bugger.”
I mean, COME ON! If that doesn’t reel you in, how about this banter between them:
“Last thing you want is to be discovered in a royal palace with your goolies out.”
“Philip!”
“No, I mean it. No wonder everyone’s keeping it hush-hush. That, and protecting your fragile nerves.”
The Queen threw him a look. “They forget. I’ve lived through a world war, that Ferguson girl, and you in the navy.”
Zing!
Scroll on by if you're not at least chuckling at this point, because this is not the book for you then. It probably goes without saying that it helps if you're either a fan of the British Royal Family or cozy mysteries. (Or maybe it doesn’t because I just said it anyway???) As for me, I’m all-in on QEII and her clan, though I wouldn’t consider myself a whodunit mystery reader on the whole. Lilibet was the thread I needed to pull me through The Windsor Knot, and I sure had a heck of a lot of fun watching it unravel.