What it’s about?

It’s 1930s London, and Lady Georgiana — thirty-fourth in line to the throne — has a lot on her plate, but little in her cupboards, in this national bestseller…

Baked beans and boiled eggs. That’s what my houseguest, the Bavarian princess, will have to eat if I don’t get help posthaste. The Queen of England has requested I entertain said princess, placing her in the playboy prince’s path, in hopes he might finally marry.

But queens never consider money, of which I have little. And which is why I moonlight as a maid-in-disguise. My plans:
1) Clean house in manner of palace.
2) Blackmail brother, Binky, into sending a few quid.
3) Unteach Princess Hanni English from gangster movies — lest she address the queen as “old broad.”
4) Keep eye on princess at parties, where she drinks like a fish.

Then there’s the matter of the body in the bookshop and Hanni’s unwitting involvement with the communist party. It’s enough to drive a girl mad…

What I think:

This was so much fun to read!

Georgia is a balancing a life of aristocratic society and gentile poverty. Her family still own the fancy houses but can barely afford to run them and she is forced to moonlight as a cleaner for the rich, hoping she isn’t recognised.

When she is asked by Queen Mary to look after a German princess and hopefully introduce her to the Prince of Wales, in an effort to distracted him from his latest married lover, Wallis Simpson, she can’t say no.

The dustsheets come off the house, her grandfather is recruited to act as a butler and Georgie has to find ways to entertain the energetic princess on a budget.

And then people die. An accident at a party and a dead body in a bookshop soon mean Georgie has solving a murder added to her list. And it becomes clearer that people are not all they seem to be.

There is lots of fun in this murder mystery. Georgie is sparky and good-humoured. Despite some of the relative hardships of her life, she is resilient and hardworking. She is witty and observant, and her ability to adapt to her surroundings means that she able to investigate and adapt.

This was a fast-paced mystery, and while I had picked up in a few of the clues, there was still plenty to keep me guessing.

I’m definitely going to pick up more of this series when I see them.