Lady Georgiana Rannoch is thirty-fourth in line for the throne, but her family has no money. Georgie left her family's Scottish Castle to live in their London home. There aren't many jobs for a woman in 1930's London, but especially for royalty. If the Queen finds out Georgie is working, she will insist on marrying her off to some deplorable foreign prince. So Georgie has to be careful that only her closest friends now she works as a temp maid.

Since no one can refuse the Queen, in this second novel, Georgie finds herself playing hostess to Princess Hannelore from Bavaria, as the Queen is hoping to create a love match between Hanni and her eldest son, the Prince of Wales, and break up the relationship between the prince and Wallis Simpson. Georgie can't admit she hasn't any money to pay for servants in her London home, so her grand-dad on her non-royal side of the family and his neighbor agree to act as butler and cook for Georgie. But she has her hands full with the young princess, fresh from the convent school and man-crazy. Her English has been learned from American gangster movies.

While trying to reign in the Princess and various parties, people all around Georgie are dropping dead and the police find it too coincidental that she is always around. She also keeps running into Darcy O'Mara, the sexy, penniless lord from Ireland.

This is the second book I have read from Rhys Bowen, in her Royal Spyness series. A Royal Pain is a little more in depth than the first, creating a very good mystery. Georgie is daring and adventurous when it comes to solving mysteries, not so much when it comes to her love life. Her mother is a former actress who frequently marries rich men but has virtually no relationship with her daughter. Georgie's best friend is Belinda, a designer who hangs with the fast set. Georgie's half-brother is Binky and his uptight wife is named Fig, but they have only a small role in this book. This is a fun, cozy mystery with entertaining characters, the real Queen Mary and Wallis Simpson, the bane of her existence. It is full of intrigue, suspected communists, and German spies. It was very enjoyable and quick read.

my rating 4/5 ( )

Georgie, Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, returns in the second installment of this series still needing to work as a specialty domestic because of her lack of funds. The Queen, not knowing her dire circumstances, asks her to play hostess to the Princess of Bavaria that she wants to catch the eye of the Prince of Wales and get him out of the clutches of Mrs. Simpson.

Georgie has to have "staff" at Rannoch House so she enlists her Grandfather and his next door neighbor to play butler and cook. The princess arrives with her maid, Irmagardt, and chaperone, Baroness Rottenmeister and proceeds to wreak havoc wherever she goes being on site of three apparently unconnected deaths.

Georgie eventually discovers that there is a plot in the works by Communists but figuring out the details gets her into a few scrapes and threatening situations.

This book was just as enjoyable and entertaining as the first and I'll be sure to stop at the library for the next installment. ( )

Second in the series. I liked it even better than the first one. A little far far fetched but charming nonetheless. ( )

Georgie, Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, related to the king of England through his grandmother Queen Victoria, is 34th in line to the English throne. She belongs to a branch of the royal family rather down on its luck, and survives by cleaning houses. She is a favourite though of the Queen who asks that she play hostess to a Bavarian princess whom Queen Mary would rather like to get her son David, at present dallying with "the American woman", interested in.

From the moment that Princess Hanni, and her attendant "pain in the neck" the Baroness, arrive on Georgie's doorstep at Rannoch House, murder seems to follow them. Hanni appears to have learnt her English through watching American gangster movies and constantly displays her command of the language with inappropriate gangster speak. To keep up pretences, Georgie has to co-opt her Cockney grandfather and his lady friend Mrs 'uggins as her hired help. Their presence in the novel provides added elements of humour.

I kept changing my mind on how I would rate this. I thought at first that it was a bit more chick-lit, a bit lighter than I normally like to read, but I was struck by its historical depth, and in the end I came to like the main character Georgie. The picture Bowen draws of Queen Mary (May) whom I remember as a rather severe looking dowager, is an interesting one, and I can understand her concern with her son's romantic involvement with "the American woman". My mother's generation world wide were horrified by his eventual abdication and took almost malicious comfort in the knowledge that Wallis Simpson could never become queen.

So yes, A ROYAL PAIN is in some senses a romp, but in others a bit of serious historical fiction. I won't be alone in working out "whodunnit" fairly early on, but as always there is the quest to see if you are right. ( )

Quite fun to read and not too predictable ( )