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Death at Glamis Castle: A Victorian Mystery    by Robin Paige Amazon.com order for
Death at Glamis Castle
by Robin Paige
Order:  USA  Can
Berkley, 2003 (2003)
Hardcover

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* * *   Reviewed by Nina de Angeli

Scotland's famed Glamis Castle makes a perfect setting for a mystery, haunted as it is by the ghosts of Shakespeare's Macbeth, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and six centuries of turbulent history. Lady Katherine Sheridan and her novel-writing alter ego Beryl Bardwell plot a gothic novel while Katherine helps her husband Charles pursue a murderer and wrestle with a royal dilemma.

Set in August 1901, just after the death of Queen Victoria, this ninth title in the series revisits the possibility that the eldest son of Edward VII, Prince Albert Victor (called Eddy) did not die in 1892 as the world believes but instead has been hidden away at Glamis Castle to avoid embarrassing the royal family with his scandalous life. Isolated except for his servant Flora MacDonald, Prince Eddy teeters on the edge of the delusion that he is Bonnie Prince Charlie on his way to the isle of Skye with his devoted savior Flora.

Faced with the threat of an international incident when Prince Eddy disappears and his housekeeper is found brutally murdered, the royals call in Lord Sheridan and assign him a military unit to help in the clandestine search for the missing prince. Rumors of a German spy in the storybook village of Glamis foreshadow the tensions between Britain and Germany that will lead to world war by 1914. Is this the same spy routed by the Sheridans in Death at Rottingdean?

Grounded in Paige's usual thorough research, Death at Glamis Castle offers a convincing fictional visit to a Scottish tourist mecca, the childhood home of Britain's beloved Queen Mum, who makes a brief appearance as a young girl in this book. While the Sheridans provide continuity with the rest of the series, to me the most interesting characters in this outing are Prince Eddy, Flora, the mysterious gypsy Taiso, and of course the castle itself, a magnificent presence.

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