Royal Whodunnits

The fashion for historical detection and for celebrity sleuths and victims is nothing new; what is perhaps new is the assiduity with which editors like Mike Ashley leave no possible avenue unexplored ... In this anthology, the deaths of kings are entertainingly dissected--we learn the truth about the demise of William the Conqueror, William Rufus and Princess Caroline of Brunswick. Rulers ranging from Macbeth to Victoria get their hands dirty with the details of crime and other celebrities from Shakespeare to Napoleon get to walk on and take a bow. Perhaps the most interesting stories are those which either look at attitudes to monarchy--Tom Holt's "Accidental Death" is a particular case in point--or those which make proper use of the limited technologies available to their killers and detectives--Tina and Tony Rath's "Who Killed Fair Rosamund?" makes neat use of a minstrel going over the old story in an attempt to work out the story logic for a ballad. And some of the stories, notably Paul Barnett's "Two Dead Men" with its picture of the interlocking psychoses of the courtiers of Mary Queen of Scots, interestingly move into the psychological thriller in which the puzzle is less interesting than the question "Why?" --Roz Kaveney