Peter Dickinson was best known as a children’s writer of speculative fiction. The Changes Trilogy, for example, shows a dystopian future England where people have suddenly rejected technology. I read them many years ago. He also wrote some adult mysteries, but this one is YA, seen from the viewpoint of a thirteen year old girl.
King And Joker is set in an alternative universe, so I suppose you could consider it speculative fiction, but it’s a murder mystery set in Buckingham Palace, which has a different royal family. The “what if?” is “What if George V’s older brother, Albert Victor(Prince Eddy), who was destined for the throne, survived the pandemic that killed him in our world and married Mary of Teck, who married George V in our world?”
As a result, the current king is Victor II. He lives in Buckingham Palace with his Spanish wife and their two children, Albert and Louise. Princess Louise, the book’s heroine, goes to a regular school outside the palace and does royal duties, as well as visiting her former nanny, now very old and in bed, who knows a lot of royal secrets.
A joker has been playing tricks around the palace. Louise suspects who it might be, but not, for a while, why. And then…there is a dead body sitting on a throne in a dark room while the royal couple in the room in front are busy hosting a Venezuelan delegation. And Louise is the one who discovers the body.
I particularly enjoyed it for the “what if?” aspect. Once you create a fictional royal family, there’s no reason not to set your story in the palace - and why not have a murder? But there is also a lot about the background to this family, some of which is connected to the murder.
This isn’t the only crime novel written by this author, but it’s the one I stumbled across by accident some years ago.
It’s available in ebook, both in Apple Books and Kindle. Amazon also offers it in paperback, though it might be second hand.
It’s good fun, well worth a read. There is a sequel, which I haven’t yet read; I do have it in ebook. But Peter Dickinson wrote quite a lot of books and they are available both in Apple Books and Kindle. You may not find the print edition in your local bookshop, but it does seem to be available in paperback.
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