Samantha Bond – Carol's Notebook

The Queen Who Came in from the Cold by S.J. Bennett

January 21, 2026January 21, 2026 by Carol4 Comments

The Queen is travelling to Italy and one of her entourage witnesses a body dump while traveling on the train. Initially it is thought that the witness was drunk, but the more time that passes, the more they are realizing that it might have actually happened. The Queen, along with her assistant private secretary, Joan McGraw, decide they need to look into the case, maybe give the official investigation a nudge or two. This time around, as the title suggests, we get a little Cold War intrigue along with the murder mystery, While some of the household are reading James Bond thrillers, the Queen is dealing with her own potential international incident. I love the Queen in these books. She's a working woman, with an unusual job with unusual constraints, but still a job, in addition to being a wife, mother, daughter, sister. She's also a woman in a man's world, surrounded by people who try to protect her when...

A Death in Diamonds by S. J. Bennett

February 5, 2025February 5, 2025 by Carol2 Comments

I've read this series from the beginning and thoroughly enjoy seeing Queen Elizabeth II as an amateur sleuth. She knows people well and has access to a lot of information but needs her assistant private secretary to do most of the legwork. This time around we've gone back in time to the late 50s. It's early in the Queen's reign and she has two young children. She and Prince Phillip have been married about 10 years and their marriage has more stressors than most, one being that a club Prince Phillip attends has been connected to a murder. Joan, the assistant private secretary, is bold, resourceful, and intelligent. She is the only one the Queen can truly trust, since in addition to the murder case, they are trying to figure out which of the Queen's advisors has been attempting to sabotage her trips abroad. The peeks into royal life are fun. The queen visits a few other countries in this one and...

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

August 4, 2017April 14, 2025 by Carol4 Comments

I should have loved Magpie Murders. It's definitely a book for mystery readers. Not only does it have two well-plotted mysteries, it has some great quotes about the nature of mysteries and reading. “You must know that feeling when it's raining outside and the heating's on and you lose yourself, utterly, in a book. You read and you read and you feel the pages slipping through your fingers until suddenly there are fewer in your right hand than there are in your left and you want to slow down but you still hurtle on towards a conclusion you can hardly bear to discover.” “As far as I'm concerned, you can't beat a good whodunnit: the twists & turns, the clues and the red herrings and then, finally, the satisfaction of having everything explained to you in a way that makes you kick yourself because you hadn't seen it from the start.” The set up is great, a novel within a novel, both murder...