THE WINDSOR KNOT

Firmly cushioned hell breaks loose when one of the guests at a Windsor Castle “dine and sleep” fails to survive the night in Bennett’s amusingly decorous debut.

Being Queen Elizabeth II is no bed of roses. The queen has to maintain a stiff upper lip during the most taxing moments, most of them evidently among her counselors. Windsor Castle, her favorite among her residences, is directly in the flight path of noisy commercial airliners. And now Maksim Brodsky, the pianist brought to her latest soiree by Russian oligarch Yuri Peyrovski and Masha Peyrovskaya, his beautiful wife, has died overnight. The potential scandal is compounded because shortly before the assembled company retired, the devilishly handsome Brodsky claimed dances with both distinguished architect Meredith Gostelow and the queen, and the manner of his demise strongly suggests autoerotic asphyxiation. Her Majesty is not amused. Nor does she believe the condescending assurance of Gavin Humphreys, the new head of MI5, that Brodsky’s death, which he’s certain is the latest in a series of humiliating assassinations of anti-Putin activists, has been perpetrated by a mole long lodged in the Windsor staff. But if Brodsky really was murdered, as a closer look at the forensics indicates, and the killer wasn’t one of the queen’s intimates, who was it? Since Elizabeth is in no position to do her own legwork, she enlists Rozie Oshodi, her Nigerian rookie assistant private secretary, to make discreet inquiries. But the crucial deductions are those of the 90-year-old monarch Rozie aptly calls “the Boss.”

The suspects are few and the mystery disappointing, but the queen makes a wonderfully self-effacing sleuth.