New Books Network Interview: S. J. Bennett

It takes a certain chutzpah to turn the queen of England into an amateur detective, but S. J. Bennett has taken on the challenge and met it with great aplomb. Not only did she convince this reader that indeed, Queen Elizabeth II could solve crimes, but she also portrays relationships within the Windsor family in warm and wholly believable ways. I found her depiction of the marriage of Elizabeth and Prince Philip, duke of Edinburgh—which lasted almost seventy-five years—particularly charming. Whether it’s accurate, I have no idea, but it certainly works on the page. You can find out a bit more about the series below, but also listen to my New Books Network interview with the author. There we explore not only the individual books and characters, both fictional and real-life, but also how the series came to be.

As usual, the rest of this post comes from New Books in Historical Fiction.

Amateur detectives come in many forms. Owning a bookstore or a bakery, running a charming country inn, working in a library—even owning a cat or a dog—puts a character into the category of potential sleuth. But few creators of amateur detectives can top S. J. Bennett, whose Her Majesty the Queen Investigates series turns Queen Elizabeth II herself into a solver of crimes.

The first three books take place in 2016, when the queen is ninety years old. Even these days, those don’t qualify as historical fiction. But they set the tone of the series, which is at once respectful and warm, even charming. The mysteries are challenging, the queen’s role believable, and the family relationships well portrayed.

Certain constraints on the queen also appear here. For example, she can solve mysteries, but she can’t be seen to solve them, because she is the queen. Similarly, she relies for help on other women, who serve as her private secretaries (a job that goes far beyond typing), because the men spend far too much time worrying about upsetting their monarch and far too little time trusting her to know what she needs and wants.

Obviously, even if one is the queen of England, only so many mysterious deaths can take place nearby without raising eyebrows. So book 4, A Death in Diamonds, moves back in time to 1957 and a scandal possibly involving Prince Philip. The latest novel, The Queen Who Came In from the Cold (Crooked Lane Books, 2025), as the title suggests, takes place during the Cold War, specifically 1961, and involves Soviet spies and double agents, including the infamous Kim Philby. To say more would be to give too much away, but it’s yet another engrossing tale with a twist at the end that turns the entire story on its head.

And yes, there are Corgis—racehorses, too.