In December 2016, a severed hand is found washed up on a beach next to the Queen’s estate at Sandringham. Her Majesty, in residence for her Christmas visit, sees a photograph and recognises the signet ring as one belonging to Edward ‘Ned’ St Cyr (pronounced Sincere), a relative of the 13th Baron Mundy, who lives ‘down the road a bit’. The 70-year-old Ned was a childhood friend of Prince Charles and often visited Sandringham. The Queen’s Assistant Private Secretary notifies the local police.

The Chief Constable of Norfolk convinces himself it would be polite to notify his sovereign of significant developments and attempts to call on Sir Simon Holcroft, the Queen’s Private Secretary. Sir Simon is away holidaying in Scotland and the Queen agrees to receive him. This could be, she thinks, her third mystery to be solved for 2016. In April, she had input into a murder case at Windsor where Detective Chief Inspector David Strong welcomed her intelligent, logical and insightful comments. In October, the Queen requested that Strong be spared to investigate a murder at Buckingham Palace. Again, with Her Majesty in the background offering suggestions, the case was done and dusted quick smart.

The Norfolk police are treating ‘the mystery of the severed hand’ as a missing person case but are open to suggestions it could be murder. Prince Philip, forthright as ever, gives his opinion: Ned is dead and a member of the family did it. The police, however, have three problems with that: no body; every member of the Mundy family has a cast-iron alibi; and no motive for a murder is apparent.

This entertaining, plot-driven and well-paced mystery is solved by the Norfolk police with significant, but behind-the-scenes, input from Elizabeth II.

Reviewed by Clive Hodges

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

S J Bennett grew up reading mystery stories and travelling the world as an army child. She became a strategy consultant and wrote several award-winning books for teenagers before turning to adult crime novels with the ‘Her Majesty the Queen Investigates’ series. Her books have been published in over 20 languages, from Japanese to Catalan. She has taught writing with City Lit, City University and the Royal Literary Fund, and lives in South London, where she also runs a writing podcast for aspiring authors called Prepublished.

You can find her on Twitter at @sophiabennett, on Instagram as sophiabennett_writer, and at www.sjbennettbooks.com.