Welcome to Georgian-era Windsor Castle for the first in a series of historical crime novels by Britain's finest practitioner of the traditional mystery.
Set in the same period of the film The Madness of King George, a young Fanny Burney, not yet the famous actress she is to become, is a lady-in-waiting to the Queen. The life of the entire castle is affected by the wanderings and ravings of the deranged monarch, and Fanny does the best she can to soothe her mistress in the midst of her troubles.
And then the murders begin...
Major Mearns and Sergeant Denny, ex-secret service men in India and Canada are employed by Prime Minister Pitt to keep an eye on the King-and foremost in their minds is whether he is in some way involved in the killings. Fanny, who loves the theatre, will leave the relative safety of the castle to sit the town's theatre. Mearns and Denny find they must watch over her as well as the King. Because in some strange way she has a connection to the murders...
Gwendoline Butler is uniquely suited to use the daily life of Georgian Winsdor Castle as a backdrop for this series, being a Windsor-based historian as well as one of the leading crime fiction writers of our time.