A Royal Pain

By: Rhys Bowen / Narrated By: Katherine Kellgren

Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins

Yup, flaws galore, but Katherine Kellgren just sounds like she’s having soooo much fun!

Things start slowly in this 2nd book of the Royal Spyness series. Lady Georgiana is just getting along, doing her work as a “Cleaning Service” for nobles and elites in early 1930s England. But then! Fishface, the man she’s s’posed to eventually marry shows up, and she has to jump out a window, catching on trees, losing various articles of clothing, hitting the ground, and sprinting off, hoping that she’s as invisible as all servants are to the upper classes.

In this book, a meeting with the Queen and a royal demand has Georgie playing hostess to a Bavarian princess. Having her grandfather and his neighbor as butler and cook? No problem. Shepherding a royal who’s looking for a good time now that she’s away from the convent where she was living/being educated? Big problem.

And when bodies start piling up, starting with Tubby, a chum who falls through a balcony railing during a party that has lotsa booze and lotsa drugs? ‘Nother big problem.

Throw in a handsome young man with Communist ideas who sparks the princess’s interest being found murdered, and it’s off to the races. The Queen will NOT give up her hope that the princess will inspire her son to leave the side of one Mrs. Wallis Simpson, but after all these misdeeds, she adds to Georgie’s to-do list: Solve things and keep the princess from starting the next world war. After all, that funny little man in Germany by the name of Hitler does NOT like Communists, but does he like the princess and her family?

There are more of Georgie’s chums, and there’s the handsome peacock of a young man who leaves her yearning and pining away. And there are more bodies than you can shake a stick at. What’s not to love?

EsPECially with the late Katherine Kellgren narrating Georgie to a “T” and seeming like she, Kellgren, is having the time of her life. Tubby all drunk and ready for more booze? Kellgren’s there! A princess who learned English from old gangster movies? Gotcha there as well. Gorgeous young Irishman saving the day? A worried and imperious Queen? Old Fishface? An old Communist bookseller? Plotting murderers overheard? Debonair and debauched young socialites? There, there, oh sooo there! Oh how I miss Ms. Kellgren, and as I continue with the series, I canNOT imagine getting to the more recent ones that have a different narrator. How on earth will she EVER be Georgie?

Yup, there are LOTS of modern glitches in language that are just a trifle jarring. And yup, Georgie needs some saving now and again. And one more yup: It takes her some time to add 2 and 2 together (Which is where I’m starting to feel all brilliant now that I’m listening to more Mysteries and am fine-honing some o’ my sleuthing skills!). But gosh, this is a fun series. I’m no lover of a lot of Ms. Bowen, have found some of her other works to be rather shallow and contrived (Oh say back in the days when I was reeeeeading print books!), but I do so love Georgie, and I love how gangly and klutzy she is, tho’ she does indeed try her darnedest.

Yesssss, this series is an Accomplice Fave, and I’ll admit that I got into ONLY cuz it was.

-But-

Y’all have awesome taste! Thanks for the fun times!