{"id":2301,"date":"2017-06-26T20:49:37","date_gmt":"2017-06-27T03:49:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=2301"},"modified":"2017-06-26T20:49:37","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T03:49:37","slug":"rhys-bowen-on-her-majestys-frightfully-secret-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/rhys-bowen-on-her-majestys-frightfully-secret-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Rhys Bowen: On Her Majesty\u2019s Frightfully Secret Service"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: if you aren\u2019t completely up to date on the Lady Georgie series, this review does contain some spoilers. If you skip it, rest assured this installment is just as much fun as all the others.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"Rhys Bowen\u2019s Lady Georgie series is about the most fun you can have \u201cbetween the covers.\u201d Ever since the publication of Her Royal Spyness <\/em>(2007), Bowen has trod the delicate line between humor, character development and great plotting to provide one of the more completely enjoyable series in the mysterious universe. Lady Georgie, for the uninitiated, lives in 1930\u2019s London and is 34th<\/sup> in line to the throne. She\u2019s impoverished but does get assignments from the Queen to do a little \u201cfamily\u201d spying \u2013 at the time, Queen Mary\u2019s greatest worry was the Prince of Wales\u2019 relationship with Wallis Simpson.<\/p>\n

By this installment, Georgie is engaged to the dashing Darcy and happily spending time with him at the family castle in Ireland when he\u2019s called away on a mission (he is a spy). At loose ends, her troubles are apparently over when she gets a pleading message from her dear friend Belinda who is waiting out an unwanted pregnancy in Italy. She stops by the Palace on her way to Italy to have tea with Queen Mary and request a release from the line of succession so she can marry Darcy (he\u2019s a Catholic and<\/em> he\u2019s Irish). When the Queen finds out where she\u2019s going, she quickly asks Georgie to join a house party at a villa near her friend. The Prince and Wallis will be attending, and the Queen wants to know if Wallis has obtained a divorce.<\/p>\n

A good bit of the humor in the books comes from Georgie\u2019s troubles with her maid, Queenie, who is hopeless at ironing, hair, make-up \u2013 all the things a ladies’ maid at the time was supposed to be an expert at. But there\u2019s something endearing about Queenie. She\u2019s found a berth with a cousin of Darcy\u2019s in the kitchen and it seems to be suiting her, so Georgie takes off, maid-less and unchaperoned (to the Queen\u2019s horror) to the continent.<\/p>\n

Arriving in Italy, it takes some time for her to track down Belinda, who has taken up residence in a Swiss clinic. Georgie eventually makes her reluctant way to the house party, which is hosted by an old boarding school friend who has married really well. The house party appears to be made up of wildly disparate people, including several German officers (it\u2019s 1935 and Hitler is in power), as well as Georgie\u2019s mother. Never very maternal, her mother is nevertheless strangely delighted to see\u00a0Georgie and asks her to help her out of a spot of blackmail.<\/p>\n

Of course, there\u2019s a murder as well as a frighteningly efficient ladies\u2019 maid named Gerda who is on loan from the mistress of the villa. The light tone is kept throughout and as is usual with a Lady Georgie book, I was often laughing aloud as I read. All is resolved at the end and it seems we happy fans have a wedding to look forward to in the next installment, and possibly three of them. If you want to know who the other two weddings belong to, you\u2019ll have to read the book!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note: if you aren\u2019t completely up to date on the Lady Georgie series, this review does contain some spoilers. If you skip it, rest assured this installment is just as much fun as all the others. Rhys Bowen\u2019s Lady Georgie series is about the most fun you can have \u201cbetween the covers.\u201d Ever since the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-2301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2301"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2304,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2301\/revisions\/2304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}