Reviews for Death at St James's Palace

The average rating for Death at St James's Palace based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-01-08 00:00:00 Andrew Roketenetz John Fielding, known as the Blind Beak, is to receive a knighthood with the investiture to take place at St James's Palace. Due to a late withdrawal from the party of three invited to the Palace, his friend, apothecary and part-time private investigator, John Rawlings, is invited to accompany him. The place is crowded and once the ceremony is over the crowds gather on the great staircase to see the Queen, Charlotte, said to be one of the ugliest incumbents ever of the throne, make her way back to her private apartment. The crush is intense and, with most people staring at the Queen, one of the assembly tumbles down the great staircase to his death. Is it an accident or has he been pushed? The only person who was aware that something untoward has happened is the Blind Beak; his extra sensitivity enables him to hear part of a whispered sentence and also an exhalation of breath. This helps convince him that the fall is no accident. But even with an accident being the most accepted verdict on the matter, the Blind Beak is far from satisfied and he recruits John Rawlings to investigate on his behalf. It is no easy matter for there are many important personages who had been around Sir George at the time of his fall and many of his friends, and possibly some enemies, were in the crowd. Rawlings has to be careful how he follows the matter up. During his investigations he comes across a very strange situation regarding a student who has absconded from the Brompton Park Boarding School and, rather than return him to the school where he is clearly unhappy due to some extraordinary circumstances, he takes him in to be part of his household. When the boy disappears he is puzzled but is too drawn into his investigations to pursue the issue immediately. Family ties and intrigues, a well dressed black beau named Jack Morocco, the question of an additional page boy at the investiture (there appeared to Rawlings to be 13 instead of the statutory 12) and other intriguing issues, including a possible lead to the whereabouts of the Brompton Park student, confuse the investigation and it takes Rawlings considerable time and plenty of effort to get to the bottom of it. But get to the bottom of it he does as he wanders around 18th-century London, a London so admirably described by Deryn Lake, whose Fielding and Rawlings mysteries are always suspense filled throughout. This one does not disappoint.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-11-11 00:00:00 Terje G. Simonsen I wanted to like this a lot more than I did--it is squarely in my time period, with blind judge Sir John Fielding and his (fictional) colleague the apothecary/detective main character, and the murder is motivated by thoroughly 18th century things. The writing is just....clunky, with a lot of telling rather than showing, and as this is a series, a lot of unnecessary catching up and reintroduction of characters and events from previous books.