Queen of Hearts by Rhys Bowen ****

Now in book 8 of the Royal Spyness series, Queens of Hearts by Rhys Bowen has given up all pretense of spying. In this installment, Lady Georgiana Rannoch is accompanying her famous actress mother, Claire Daniels, across the Atlantic on the luxury ship, the Berengaria. Her boyfriend Darcy O’Mara is on board looking for a jewel thief in the employ of Scotland Yard. Georgie sees someone go overboard, but no one is missing. When movie mogul Cy Goldman is murdered, Georgie solves the mystery of the murder and the jewel thief. Set in 1934.

Our main character, Georgie, is thirty-fifth in line to the throne, but otherwise penniless. Before she can board the ship, her Mummy must buy her new clothes. On board the Berengaria, they meet Cy Goldman, the impresario of Golden Pictures, and film star Stella Brightwell. Cy wants Claire to star in his next pictures, but Mummy is set on a quickie Reno divorce and an immediate return to her rich fiancé Max in Germany.

When she learns that a Reno divorce takes six weeks, everyone ends up in Beverly Hills, and ultimately, at Cy’s castle overlooking the Pacific Ocean, called Alhambra Two. Also at the castle are Darcy; Belinda Warburton-Stoke, a friend of Georgie; Queenie, Georgie’s cut-price maid; Charlie Chaplin; Craig Hart, the romantic male lead of the movie (also gay); Ronnie, Cy’s assistant; Cy’s wife who doesn’t live with him and never visits California; a gossip columnist accompanying Mrs. Goldman; and Algie Broxley-Foggett, a clumsy school chum of Darcy.

More than halfway through the book, Cy is discovered murdered.

“I wouldn’t know. Personally I’d rather stay in England and be poor. I don’t like the sound of the way things are going in Germany.” (1934)

“And you know what we used to say on the stage? If you can’t be good, be careful, and if you can’t be careful put a sixpence between your knees.” And [Claire Daniels] laughed.

“[Reno] is certainly not Monte Carlo,” Mummy said, coughing in the smoke-laden atmosphere as we walked between craps tables and penny slot machines. … “I never believed I could feel so homesick and so far away.”

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