Hello St Marks

My happy place is with Lady Georgiana Rannoch. I visit her often and never get bored despite each novel following the exact same pattern as the prior. This past month or two I've returned to 'Her Royal Spyness' (in which we meet Georgie, 34th in the line of succession and dead broke, with a dead Frenchman in her bath), 'A Royal Pain' (in which Queen Mary asks Georgie to babysit a dodgy German Princess), 'Royal Flush' (in which our heroine spies on the Prince of Wales and the odious Mrs Simpson), 'Royal Blood' (in which Georgie encounters murderous vampires in Transylvania while attending a royal wedding), 'Naughty in Nice' (in which Lady Georgiana is an accident-prone model for Chanel; murder ensues) and—oh yes—'God Rest Ye, Royal Gentlemen', Rhys Bowen's 2021 release, long-awaited by Lady Georgie's avid followers, in which we catch up with her life since... but that would be telling. 

'The Last Mrs Summers' is the 14th book in the the 'Royal Spyness' series by Rhys Bowen (AKA Janet Quin-Harkin). When you're 14 books in, it's like a old family friend comes visiting and you settle in for a long chat. We met  Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie Rannoch in 1932  when she was 20ish, 34th in line to the throne currently held by Queen Mary and flat broke. "I am constantly being reminded that it is my duty to make a good match with some half-lunatic buck-toothed, chinless, spineless and utterly awful European royal, thus cementing ties with a potential enemy", says Georgie, and flees the ancestral castle in Scotland. Too aristocratic to work, she's ill-equipped for independence (she knows where to seat a Archbishop at dinner but can't boil an egg), accident-prone, plucky and kind—the perfect protagonist for a comic historical cosie. Then a Frenchman is found dead in a duke's bathtub and away we go. But I can't be glib ...