The Twelve Clues of Christmas

Starred review from September 3, 2012
Set at Christmas-time 1933, Bowen’s sixth whodunit featuring the irrepressible Lady Georgiana Rannoch (after 2011’s Naughty in Nice) may be her best yet. Despite her connections (albeit attenuated) to the Crown (she’s 35th in the line of succession), Georgiana finds herself at the mercy of her brother’s ghastly family. Escape comes just in time for the holidays when she answers an advert and is hired to help Lady Hawse-Gorzley with a large Christmas party at Hawse-Gorzley’s home in Tiddleton-under-Lovey, Devonshire. Accompanied by the anti-Jeeves, her bumbling, if endearing, maid Queenie, Georgiana arrives in Tiddleton-Under-Lovey only to find that a series of apparently accidental deaths has begun to plague the rustic community. With one villager dying each day, the amateur sleuth suspects that the accidents are anything but. Bowen blends zany humor with fair-play detection as well as any author of traditional mysteries. Agent: Meg Ruley, the Jane Rotrosen Agency.

October 1, 2012
Being 35th in line for the British throne is no sinecure. Lady Georgiana Rannoch, distant heir to the Empire, has resigned herself to a dull Christmas in the family's cold and cheerless Scottish castle with her henpecked brother, his awful wife and her even more repugnant family when an opportunity arises to act as a paid hostess at a house party. Arriving in the picture-perfect village of Tiddleton-under-Lovey, where her actress mother and Noel Coward are spending a working Christmas, she's warmly greeted by the Hawse-Gorzley family, who are providing an old-fashioned Christmas to a wide assortment of paying guests. Georgiana is thrilled to discover that the man she loves, Darcy O'Mara, is the nephew of Mrs. Hawse-Gorzley and is spending Christmas with the family. True, a neighbor seems to have shot himself accidentally while sitting in a pear tree, but it is only when more deaths follow on a daily basis that Georgiana, who is no stranger to sleuthing, takes an interest. The guests are spooked, even though only locals seem to be targeted. The investigating officer calls on Georgiana's grandfather, a retired London policeman who's acting as a butler for his actress daughter, for help with the deaths, which the officer still can't believe are murders, perhaps because he's preoccupied with the convicts who've escaped from Dartmoor Prison. It takes a while for the penny to drop, but Georgiana finally sees a pattern to the deaths, though the clever killer will not be easy to catch. The sixth in Bowen's delightful Royal Spyness mysteries set in the 1930s (Naughty in Nice, 2011, etc.) gives readers a blueprint for an old-fashioned English Christmas, complete with traditional recipes, games, drinks and homicides.

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Starred review from October 15, 2012

It's December 1933, and single, penniless Lady Georgiana Rannoch is facing a bleak winter in Scotland at Castle Rannoch with her brother and dreadful sister-in-law. Seizing on an opportunity to escape, Georgie answers an ad to play hostess at a Christmas house party in a small English village, but the idyllic village soon turns sinister when the villagers begin dying in suspicious accidents. VERDICT Lady Georgiana's sixth outing (after Naughty in Nice) offers another witty and thoroughly enjoyable mystery with a dash of romance. Christmas recipes and period party game instructions are included. [See Prepub Alert, 7/5/12.]

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2012
Here's a very cheeky cozy that both celebrates and satirizes the conventions of the English country-house mystery. Bowen sets her latest in the depths of the Depression, allowing hints of hard times to seep into even her upper-class milieu. Lady Georgiana Rannoch, the heroine of the Royal Spyness series (this is the sixth entry), is in line for succession to the throne. But she's thirty-fifth in line, enough to get invited to the occasional royal party but not enough to pay the rent. She's about to be evicted by repellent relatives from her family home, Castle Rannoch, in Scotland, when she sees an ad in The Lady asking for someone of impeccable background to supervise festivities at a country house in a tiny English village, Tiddleton-under-Lovey. The villagers seem to be accident-prone: one falls out of a tree and dies; another drowns; another is asphyxiated, prompting Lady Georgiana to turn from games-mistress to investigator. Bowen, who has won both the Agatha and Anthony Awards, gives us another tongue-in-cheek romp. With Christmas recipes and instructions for traditional games at book's end.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)