The Dead Queen’s Garden
This is the third in Slade’s Charlotte Richmond Investigates series, set in Hampshire, England, in 1858. Her previous books have been praised by the HNS reviewer as ‘well paced and witty’, but for my taste The Dead Queen’s Garden is rather slow, and my sense of humour is obviously missing where this book is concerned!
That said, it is well-written, and the plotting is good, although if I had been editing it, I would have queried a few things. For instance, I do not think a Victorian widow, even if young, would tell an eleven-year-old boy to call her Char! And there is a scene between Sibella, one of the main characters, and the protagonist which ends without giving the reason why Sibella has sought the meeting. She only explains in a later scene.
But despite the fact that, to me at any rate, the motive driving the plot was obvious, I passed a pleasant few hours reading it and look forward to the next in the series, where no doubt more of Charlotte’s background will be revealed.
