Mystery is a genre that has never lost and will never lose appeal amongst readers. Be it avid readers or the ones that read to pass time, mysteries qualify as the best bet for an interesting and engrossing read.
Here is another mystery series by Agatha award winning and mystery author Rhys Bowen – Royal Spyness series – set in the 1920s and 1930s! From a writer who is bestselling with New York Times, this series revolves around a penniless twenty something girl, named Lady Victoria Georginia Charlotte Eugenie, with royalty present only in the name. The protagonist Georgie is a broke girl whose life takes her for a roller coaster ride. She is royal but penniless and what more, she is thirty fourth in line to the throne. In each of the books in the series. this girl has to brave upon herself the situations she is thrown in and walk out of it unscathed or not. The series takes us through the journey of Georgie’s life in which she attends functions or carries out matchmaking and more.
To add to her woes, she has spoilt cousins, a hateful and spiteful brother, a poor family which has royalty only to the name and many more. Georgie flees to London from Scotland when her brother cuts her allowance off and escapes from her fish face of a fiancé. From here begins the first endeavor in the series where she takes on several jobs in which she is able to last in none of them.
Georgie gets sacked from her sales girl behind the cosmetics counter job in just five hours. She makes some money by housekeeping. In between all this she falls in love for a royal who is a minor making the entire situation unsuitable and unfavorable. The Queen summons Georgie to keep an eye on her son who is a play boy.
To make things worse, a scheming Frenchman, who is arrogant, plans to amass her family wealth which is an 800 year old estate. The twist in the tale happens when the man is found in Goergie’s bath tub, dead! How she is able to clear her very long family name in the case forms the rest of the story.
In the second of the series, the Royal Pain, Georgie is driven crazy with having to play a match maker. One has to recount the play boy prince on whom she had spied earlier. The Queen of England hatches a plan to get the prince to marry and finally settle down. Who else than Georgie would the Queen choose for playing the role of a match maker?
A Bavarian Princess is chosen by the Queen whom Georgie would need to entertain. She would have to tailor the events such that the Princess ends up in the path of the play boy prince. They would then have a Grand wedding and live happily ever after.
Well, as we said earlier, Georgie is penniless. Nevertheless, a royal, distant or not, never gives up. She cleans up her house to make it look like a palace and makes all the necessary arrangements. She disguises herself as a maid to wait upon the princess too. She gets her Grandfather and her neighbor to pretend to be the domestic staff. In between all this, she has to curb her sister’s habit of shoplifting which would be pretty embarrassing. Oh yes! The horrible English learnt from the American Gangster movies should be scrubbed off too. Georgie has a hard time with having to keep an eye on her in the parties too. Adding to her worries is the body that is discovered in the bookshop. How Georgie juggles past makes the story.
In Royal Flush, Georgie is made to join hands with the Scotland Yard to prevent the Prince of Wales from being shot at the shooting party at Balmoral. Her housekeeping business frizzles as it is summer and most of her clients are spending the summer in the country. To keep it going she decides to become a theatre and dinner companion. Things don’t go smooth with the very first client who seemed to have wrong notions. Georgie arrives at Castle Rannoch after being shipped there to uphold the family respect. Here she upholds the word given to the Queen to prevent a divorcee guest from seducing the Prince of Wales.
The next in series is Royal Blood in which Georgie is asked to represent the royals in Transylvania at a wedding by the Queen. Seeing an escape from her hateful brother Georgie accepts and lands herself in a twist. She finds the bride bleeding from the chin and a guest who has been poisoned. The story unravels as to how Georgie saves the wedding and the festivities.
In Naughty in nice, the next in the series, a snuff box is stolen and the Queen entrusts the mission of finding it to Georgie, who escapes to French Riviera under that context. There she is asked by Coco Chanel to model for the latest line of clothing. While walking the ramp, a necklace that belongs to Her Majesty is stolen. With an unsolved mystery added to the cup, Georgie is on the quest to recover the priceless items while keeping an eye on Darcy O’ Mara who is her love interest.
In the latest of the series Heirs and Graces, Georgie is asked to groom the heir for the higher society. The heir happens to have been freshly discovered from Australia’s outback. Well, even if she is 34th in line to the throne Georgie does know her table manners.
When asked how real the characters are, Rhys comments that most of the incidents and experiences have a shade and color from her own life. Her husband’s family on the mother’s side happens to have a royal descent and she has heard many stories and the ways the royals behave. She hopes that when the current Queen reads the books she would smile and acknowledge of the humans inside than the royal exterior put on outside.
