Prior to Portsmouth, Her Majesty had last seen the painting decades ago, hanging outside her bedroom door, and she has no idea how or when it left her possession. Our super-sleuth Queen unites sharp intuition and first-class memory with a lifetime of observation to outwit the police and MI5. And, knowing that a case will be solved in no way takes away from the thrill of events leading up to that solution. For those who follow The Royals, (not me) and those who have avidly watched The Crown series, this is a quite different (and perhaps more favorable) portrait of England’s longest reigning monarch.

In this delightful and suspenseful whodunit, author SJ Bennett pulls off the prodigious feat of transforming Queen Elizabeth into an amateur detective. Whilst your initial impressions of a monarch might not include solving crimes; this reigning monarch has a wonderful array of sleuthing abilities!

In this book, Howard uses the two characters of John and Niema to illustrate what a different world spies live in. The Queen tasks her Assistant Private Secretary, Rozie Oshodi, with finding out how the painting made its way out of the royal collection and into the hands of the Admiralty, where it now hangs on display in a Royal Navy exhibition in Portsmouth. On the ground we were in a strange, deep twilight, and everything was quiet, but overhead the sky glowed. Her husband Dallas was on a mission with her and John one day and he ends his life on a mission, to them, for a good cause. This time it’s a picture of the Royal yacht Britannia (sp) and a murder around the pool that bring Rozie and her majesty the Queen on the case.

Needless to say it gets extremely convoluted and I was no more invested in this string of crimes than those in the first book. Holmsas tokias bylas vadindavo „trijų pypkių bylomis“ – jam reikėjo išrūkyti tris pypkes, kol jo genialus protas surasdavo visus atsakymus. Part of their cover is that John is to be introduced to Niema at Ronsard's party, at his Villa, and become immediately enamored with her. All the Queen's Men doesn't have the revelations of the origin story in The Windsor Knot (2020) which had the extra charm of revealing the REAL Her Majesty's Secret Service, but I can't begrudge that. Also, I wanted to include a link to The Royal Collection Trust, which is such a big part of A Three Dog Problem/All the Queen’s Men.

But when the plan goes awry, Niema and Medina must take flight in a strange land--and soon find their partnership sparked by an erotic charge.