ROYAL GAMBIT

An undercover agent gets drawn into a paranormal murder investigation involving the British royal family that tests her personal loyalties and her own extraordinary abilities.

Alexandra Dennis-Palmer-Hudson-Gilmore-Garnsey, also known as the 12th Lady Mondegreen, never asked to join the Checquy Group, a secret government agency that protects British national interests from supernatural threats. When she was a child, her parents allowed the Checquy to take Alix and help develop her signature gift—the ability to energetically shatter bones—so she could become a Pawn, a special operative. Since Alix grew up close to the royal family and had occasionally worked as a bodyguard for them, it seemed only natural to appoint her as lady-in-waiting to her childhood friend Princess Louise after the mysterious death of her brother Edmund, the Prince of Wales and heir to the throne. Alix’s job with the Checquy Group has suddenly become far more difficult: Not only is she now tasked with actively protecting Louise as the next British monarch but she’s also investigating Edmund’s demise as a supernatural murder. Clever, complex, and fast-paced, this fantasy thriller’s greatest strength is the imaginatively crafted world in which events take place. Everything is possible here in the alternative universe O’Malley creates, including characters who routinely defy all empirical laws by turning into trees and stegosauruses and unusual modes of death involving energetically implanted brain cubes. The occasional borrowed tiara on her head, Alix moves through an environment where nothing is ever quite what it seems. The closer she comes to finding Edmund’s killer, the more Alix uncovers about the secrets surrounding her position within both the Checquy Group and the royal family.

A smart fantasy thriller that deftly mingles the paranormal with the bureaucratic and mundane.