PERIL IN PARIS (Her Royal Spyness #16) by Rhys Bowen will be published on November 8th 2022 by Berkley.
Having suffered through months of morning sickness, Lady Georgiana Rannoch is finally feeling better. She is also awfully bored in her rambling country home. To liven things up, Georgie's husband, the dashing and secretive Darcy O'Mara, proposes a trip to Paris. Darcy has some business to attend to in Paris, and Georgie's friend Belinda has been begging her to come for a visit. While it is not the romantic getaway that she's hoped for, Georgie enjoys exploring Paris, meeting new friends, and helping Belinda who is apprenticing with the famous Coco Chanel. Not only does Georgie get roped into helping prepare for Chanel's big fashion show, she finds herself reluctantly modeling a maternity dress.
Struggling to complete his top secret mission for the British government, Darcy recruits Georgie. All she has to do is approach a German dignitary at the fashion show and retrieve classified documents and microfilm that was sent by the woman's Jewish husband. The simple task gets complicated when Georgie finds a dead American woman in the German lady's seat. When it is determined that the American woman died by cyanide poisoning, Georgie jumps to the top of the heavy-handed French detective's suspect list. With help from Darcy and Belinda, Georgie conducts her own investigation to prove her innocence and find the killer.
I am a big fan of the Her Royal Spyness series and have read all of the books. Georgie is a great main character—a relative of the king of England, but low enough down in the line of succession to not really matter. She's a bit naive, and has a bad habit of getting caught up in murder investigations. I also enjoy the cast of reoccurring characters—including Georgie's husband, her narcissistic mother, and her best friend, Belinda. Georgie's hopeless failure of a maid/cook, Queenie, only made a brief appearance in the beginning, and I missed her ridiculous antics. I did enjoy seeing another side of Wallis Simpson. She's as forceful and self-absorbed as ever, but she does come through for Georgie when it looks like she might be charged with a crime.
The first half of the novel was a bit drawn out as the reader follows Georgie as she explores Paris, meets new friends, and hangs out with Belinda at the House of Chanel. Some of those early scenes are crucial to the story, but others seemed more like unnecessary filler. And Georgie's doubting Darcy's loyalty to Britain seemed strange.
Once the American woman turned by dead at the fashion show, the storyline picked up. There is a question of who the intended target was—the heavily guarded Germany woman or the obnoxious American woman who has managed to make a string of enemies during her short stay in Paris. I'll admit that I had the killer's identity figured out early on, but that did not prevent me from enjoying the novel. Overall, I loved the novel. It is a great addition to the series. I can't wait to see what happens next and how motherhood will affect Georgie's (mis)adventures.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.