Give up your foolish plan. If not you die."
When elderly Queen Hanna of Iconia discovers the anonymous letter in her
dress pocket, she knows someone in her household is spying on her. The
queen is secretly planning a ceremony of atonement that she hopes will
secure the royal succession. Journalist Charles Venables is asked to
help identify the spy before her next public appearance. But when Queen
Hanna is strangled with a museum relic known as the 'Curse of the
Herzgovins', Venables knows an all too human hand is involved. But how
was the murderer able to enter the queen's heavily guarded chamber? And
why was the body found wearing the royal ceremonial robes rather than
the clothes she had retired in?
Many Golden Age books have a plot involving an imaginary European
kingdom, inspired by 'Ruritania', the setting for the 1894 bestseller
The Prisoner of Zenda. Ruritania became the basis for hundreds of
imitations (Lutha, Graustark, and Riechentenburg to name but a few) as
well as parodies -- the Marx Brothers' film, Duck Soup, features Groucho
as the dictator of mythical Freedonia. The Ruritanian setting was so
broadly known that the author refutes it directly in Death of a Queen.
When Venables complains 'This place sounds dreadfully like Ruritania',
his colleague replies 'There's nothing Ruritanian about Queen Hanna.'
Author Christopher St John Sprigg was a polymath who read widely across
history, politics, and culture, and he put this knowledge to good use in
Death of a Queen, devising Iconian history, heritage and architecture
with an enthusiasm and realism that add to the book's appeal.
