Review: A Royal Pain, by Rhys Bowen

A Royal Pain, by Rhys Bowen

a review by Rich Horton

I came across this book in an antique store near Rolla, MO, a few weeks ago. It looked like a book my daughter might enjoy -- it's an historical mystery set in England in the 1930s, and my daughter regularly reads English-set historical mysteries. I suppose it was a good choice in a sense -- as my daughter told me when I tried to give it to her that she'd already read it! So my wife read it, and then I figured I'd read it, as sort of a palate cleanser after several more serious novels. 

Rhys Bowen is a pseudonym for Janet Quin-Harkin, who was born in 1941 in Bath, England, but has been in the US for some decades now. She was educated at London University, worked for the BBC and as a dance teacher, and wrote children's books, YA books, and category romances under her own name. As Rhys Bowen, she has written three long series, set in Wales, England, and the US: respectively the Constable Evan Evans series, the Her Royal Spyness series, and the Mollie Murphy series.

A Royal Pain, from 2008, is the second book, following Her Royal Spyness, in that series. The first-person protagonist is Lady Georgiana Rannoch, thirty-fourth in line to the English throne. Alas, she is quite poor -- her late father was a spendthrift Scottish peer, her mother an actress. Lady Georgiana, or Georgie, is living in London, secretly working as a house cleaner, while remaining fairly chummy with the Queen. It's 1932, and Queen Mary's primary concern is that the Crown Prince is having an affair with a married American, Wallis Simpson. The Queen wants Georgie to host a Bavarian princess, Hannelore, and to take her to society parties at which the Crown Prince will be -- in the hopes that the very beautiful princess will attract his attention.

Georgie isn't happy about this -- for one thing, due to her poverty, she's really not that much a part of society. But you can't say no to the Queen. So she takes in Hannelore, who turns out to be very pretty indeed, and also very interested in boys -- it seems she feels deprived of sexual experience after a convent education. Hanni, as she is called, also speaks English in an exaggerated American gangster accent. But Georgie agrees to try, getting help from her actress mother's father, an ex-cop, who agrees to act as butler while his lady friend will cook. 

Hanni is a problem indeed, with a habit of shoplifting, and of flirting with anyone male. Worse, one of the males who interests her is Sidney Roberts, a young firebrand of a Communist, and another is Darcy O'Mara, who was a character in Her Royal Spyness, and on whom the virginal Georgie has a major crush. Alas, the Crown Prince isn't interested in Hanni -- Mrs. Simpson has her claws in him for sure. And there are other problems -- at a wild party, complete with cocaine, an acquaintance of Georgie's falls to his death.

Not long after, Sidney Roberts is murdered -- and Hannelore is an obvious suspect, as she found the body and the murder weapon. Georgie must deal with the police, while trying to avoid a scandal or an international incident -- how would it look if a prominent German royal was arrested for murder? And would that play into a certain rising politician named Hitler's hands? The Queen wants Georgie to investigate the murder to allow her to stay ahead of the police. But Georgie doesn't really have those skills. And why does Darcy keep turning up? And when two more people end up dead ...

The reader will not really be fooled as to the identities of the baddies, though their specific motivations do take a while to come clear. The novel really takes a while to get around to resolving things -- I'd say the mystery is worth perhaps 20,000 words of story. Granted, there is a lot of time taken up with Georgie and her friends and her slow-burning not quite a romance, and Hanni's intrigues, and those of Georgie's eagerly bedhopping friend Belinda.

It's really not a very good novel. But Bowen writes engagingly enough, though not elegantly. Her characters seem transplanted from perhaps the 1990s to the 1930s, and it's pretty clear that historical verisimilitude is by no means a goal. I'll just say that I'm not tempted to read any more of her books, but I can see how they could be popular with readers looking for very light entertainment with a less than convincing veneer of a historical setting.