A Murder at Balmoral by Chris McGeorge

A Murder at Balmoral
by Chris McGeorge

ISBN-13: 9780593544136
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
Released: October 25th 2022

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
The Crown meets Clue. The royal family has gathered at their Scottish retreat, Balmoral Castle, for a traditional Christmas. As a blizzard gathers outside and a delicious dinner is prepared, the family circles up for a holiday toast. King Eric has something momentous to say--in fact, he is about to name his successor. But as he sips a glass of his favorite whiskey, he drops dead.

The king has been poisoned, someone in the family must have done it, and each one of them had opportunity and motive. Eric's beloved head chef, Jonathan, must now play detective. Why would one of the king's own family members want to kill him? What happens in the castle usually stays in the castle, but this secret might be too big for these battlements. Jon is determined to expose the truth, even if it puts him in a killer's crosshairs--and shakes the entire monarchy to its core.


My Review:
A Murder at Balmoral is a soap opera with a mystery and doesn't have satisfactory ending. The prologue was from the point of view of one of the royal family, and they admitted they had poisoned the whisky. Despite that, I was convinced by 20% that the murder weapon was really That and either Person One or Person Two did it. Way before the end, I'd narrowed those two suspects down to the correct whodunit. Personally, I thought the whole poison-in-the-whisky explanation made no sense (especially why there were so many jars of poison if only one person was intended as a target). The chef--who is logical, but tired, in poor health, and not trained as a detective--investigated who poisoned the whisky and did eventually track down who poisoned it and then what was really going on.

The problem (as least with the Advanced Reader Copy) was that it felt like the author changed some things and forgot to fix it so everything in this twisty soap opera made sense. Because a whole heck of a lot made little sense. It also didn't seem realistic. To use the least spoiler-creating example, they're in the middle of a white-out blizzard. Jon went outside without a coat to chase a suspected killer. It's very deep snow and he's outside a long time, but he doesn't freeze. He never even changed out of his wet clothes. And if he felt his main job was to protect the royal family from harm, why was he running into the snow (and getting lost) rather than going back to the family, leaving the suspected killer out in the deadly snow?

The ending hinted at the future of the characters, but it left things open-ended--this MIGHT happen, but what did they actually do? For example, one character was desperate to escape being crowned monarch even if it meant suicide, yet we never find out if they accept their crown or do escape. Another character died. We're told that the public was informed that person stepped out of public life to focus on running a business. Yet the employees in that person's business would have noticed that he never showed up. Anyway. This book will probably mostly appeal to those who love to follow the lives the royal family (even if this one is fictional). There was some bad language. There was no sex.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.