AN UNEXPECTED PERIL

A scandalous Victorian couple test the limits of their relationship when they get involved in yet another murder.

Why is lepidopterist Veronica Speedwell bored with life in London? After all, she and her love, the Hon. Revelstoke Templeton-Vane, better known as Stoker, are living on a lovely estate while they work on a vast collection of objects of natural history and help design an exhibit to honor Alice Baker-Greene, an intrepid mountaineer and feminist, who died in a climbing accident in the tiny country of the Alpenwald. Princess Gisela of the Alpenwald herself comes to open the exhibit. All goes smoothly until Stoker finds Alice’s climbing rope among the exhibition items and notices that it wasn’t frayed but cut with a knife, turning her fatal accident into murder. Veronica, who’d met and admired Alice, is keen to investigate, but Stoker’s not interested in expanding their case files. Their differences are rendered moot when members of the Alpenwald delegation beg Veronica to pose as the wayward Princess Gisela, who often goes off on little trips on her own, in order to avert the scandal that would surely arise if she did not show up for her engagements. The two women look remarkably alike because both are related through Queen Victoria’s large family, Veronica as the unacknowledged daughter of Prince Bertie. Now that she has entree to all the Alpenwalders, Veronica, her boredom decisively ended, sets to work sleuthing with the reluctant Stoker. Their discoveries soon put them at odds with a clever killer.

Oodles of diverse characters add extra interest to a knotty mystery.