Malice at the Palace

Malice at the Palace is the ninth book in Rhys Bowen’s Royal Spyness series, a 2015 cozy historical mystery in which thirty-fifth in line to the throne Lady Georgiana "Georgie" Rannoch is dispatched by Queen Mary to Kensington Palace to chaperone Princess Marina of Greece in the weeks before her wedding to the king’s wayward son Prince George, Duke of Kent. The body of Bobo Carrington, a high-society party girl with rumored ties to George, is found on Kensington grounds. The Queen wants this kept very, very quiet. Georgie wants to actually solve it.

Bowen is at home in the 1930s royal-adjacent register, and Malice at the Palace gets a lot of mileage from the real-world peculiarities of Prince George’s biography (the addictions, the affairs, the Noel Coward rumors) without ever putting a foot wrong on what a cozy can do. Darcy O’Mara’s romantic subplot rolls forward by exactly the right amount. The supporting cast (Queenie the catastrophic ladies’ maid, Belinda, Sir Hubert) all earn their pages. The mystery is solidly fair-play.

Recommended for Royal Spyness readers, fans of cozy historical mystery from the Jacqueline Winspear / Carola Dunn shelf, and anyone looking for books like Malice at the Palace where the British royal family is a working setting rather than a costume. Four stars and an above-average entry in a comfortable series.