Couldn’t put Humpty together again!

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All the Queen’s Men (Her Majesty the Queen Investigates #2) by S.J. Bennett   

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️




Something is broken in the palace and it’s up to the Queen and her private secretary, Rozie Oshodi to fix it. 
Its 2016, a women is found dead in the Palace swimming pool, other women are being left threatening sexual notes. What is going on? The Queen is missing a personal painting, “Britannia. [It] used to hang outside [her] bedroom.” As Philip puts it, “What, the ghastly little one by the Australian who couldn’t do boats? That.” The Queen asks Rozie to investigate. It seems for some reason the Queen is fond of that small work.
The investigation leads Rozie back in time to a rash of missing items in Palace in the 1980’s dubbed the Breakages Business. She has her hands full Asher investigations deepen.
Once again the Queen directs procedures from afar without letting on her involvement. All the while having to disguise from her various Secretaries what is happening. The prodding from behind the scenes, a word dropped here, a participle left hanging there. I began to find some of it quite annoying. All to placate the Queen’s Men, who occasionally needed to be jollied along, to have their egos soothed, even as their unfailing efforts to protect the Queen seemed to sometimes devolve into obstruction by default, to the point of rendering a situation unworkable.
I felt sympathy for the Queen and liked the often whimsical reflections that Bennett has us being party to. I felt sad for the Queen having fewer companions left to reminisce about old times with.  (I love the interplay between the Queen and Prince Philip BTW).  
The problems besetting the Palace, both architecturally and on the personal level appear steeped in believability.
There’s much to hang onto in this cozy mystery with a twist of regalit, on the who dunnit level. The intricacies of Palace life, the Queen and her relationship with her dogs, particularly when pondering a situation is a Three Dog problem. I enjoyed the throwaway a lines about real people (Camilla’s charitable work with abused women and her being hysterical in a good way!) 
Chronologically the story is reasonably up to date makes me wonder where to next for the series.  Yet despite all the wonderful, gossipy insights, I found this second in the series not quite as strong as the first.

A William Morrow ARC via NetGalley 
Please note: Quotes taken from an advanced reading copy maybe subject to change

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