Murder Most Royal

And now the series is about to become a trilogy. MURDER MOST ROYAL will be published by Bonnier in the UK on 10 November. The Queen’s investigations continue.

When I wrote the majority of this book, the Queen was alive and if not always entirely well, then certainly hoping to participate as much as possible in her Platinum Jubilee celebrations. She visited Sandringham in Norfolk to see her horses and stayed at Wood Farm, described in these pages. Six years before, when this story is set, Philip had been planning out his retirement here and there seemed no reason why the Queen wouldn’t go on to live beyond 100, as her mother had, and host many more Christmases there.

The Queen was in her nineties when I had the idea for this series. She was a part of our lives, a highly respected world leader, a famously hard worker, matriarch, animal lover and diplomat. She had a unique combination of humility and self-assurance, dedication, curiosity and a sense of fun. Knowing she wouldn’t always be with us, I wanted to capture some of those attributes on the page. The advantage of being a novelist, rather than a biographer, was that I could also imagine the world from her point of view. I don’t know if I’ve done her thought processes justice, but I’ve certainly tried. I don’t for a minute imagine she was perfect, or that there isn’t room for a lot of modernisation in the royal family, but the love and loyalty that she inspired was obvious when I was doing my research. It was very personal. Nobody close to her wanted to let her down.

If you want to relax with a book and enjoy a world where Elizabeth is in charge, ideally with a corgi by your side and a Dubonnet in hand, then this series is for you. Murder Most Royal is the third book in a modern trilogy and now I intend to go back in time, to insert more mysteries into the Queen’s long life. Her detecting adventures aren’t over yet.

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