Guest review: A Three Dog Problem by S J Bennett

In the wake of a referendum which has divided the nation, the last thing the Queen needs is any more problems to worry about. But when an oil painting of the Royal Yacht Britannia - first given to the Queen in the 1960s - shows up unexpectedly in a Royal Navy exhibition, she begins to realise that something is up.

When a body is found in the Palace swimming pool, she finds herself once again in the middle of an investigation which has more twists and turns than she could ever have suspected. With her trusted secretary Rozie by her side, the Queen is determined to solve the case. But will she be able to do it before the murderer strikes again?

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Our wonderful guest reviewer is back. After his review of the first book in this series, The Windsor Knot, he's back to give us his opinion on this second volume.

Somewhere within this book is a decent whodunnit - but I had some difficulty finding it.  I found the plot unnecessarily complicated, with too many separate sub-plots and linked events.  Too many times, I had to check back top see if I had missed something.  Some of the conclusions arrived at on the way to solving the mysteries seemed to have been arrived at by intuition rather than deduction.

I also found myself increasingly distracted by the basic concept on which the book is built - the notion of Queen Elizabeth 2 as a solver of crimes - and by what was, for me, the intrusion of events around the royal family circle which had nothing to do with the story.

I do realise that this may be partly due to my lack of sympathy with the institution of royalty, and particularly with all the flummery surrounding it.  If you don’t share that lack of sympathy, and if you can pay close attention to ensure you don’t get lost among the twists and turns of the plot, this may be just the book for you.

Thanks, Guest. Maybe we'll see you back here in a year for the next one!