The tale of the fictional Marianne Fleury was inspired by my reading of Miss Dior, by Justine Picardie, first published in 2021, which tells the extraordinary story of Christian Dior’s sister Catherine. She was a young Resistance fighter, captured and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp from Paris. She returned after the war, almost unrecognisable after all she had suffered, but continued as her brother’s muse and became a successful rose farmer in Provence, whose flowers were used in his perfumes. Christian died in the time frame of this book, in 1957, but Catherine died in 2008, at the age of ninety. Justine’s book captures the joy and terror of those war and post-war years. It also describes the importance of couture fashion in the rebuilding of post-war France. I recommend it.
S.J. Bennett, August 2023
Acknowledgements
As always, I must thank the late Queen Elizabeth II for a life of service, a sense of fun, and for preserving the mystery of the monarchy enough to let a novelist imagine this secret fictional string to her bow.
I have been lucky to see this series, like the Queen, travel around the world, and I want to take this chance to thank Sam Edenborough, the team at ILA and all my editors, translators and marketing teams in countries from France and Germany to Australia and Japan. It’s a privilege to see your support for the stories and the wonderful covers you give every book.
At home, I’m ever grateful to Ben Willis at Bonnier Zaffre, who is the best editor I could possibly hope for. Thank you, too, to Nick Stearn for the covers, to Iker Ayesteran for the wonderful illustrations (especially the corgis), to Isabella Boyne for making everything run more smoothly than I have any right to ask, and to Elinor Fewster for making sure people know about the books.
Charlie Campbell at Greyhound Literary remains the best agent in the business. I still feel as lucky as I did when we started out together in 2020. And here we are, four books down the line.
The Transatlantics: thank you for all your encouragement and sage advice. Bonnie MacBird, you are a great Sherlockian and a treasured friend. Vanessa Harbour, I couldn’t have done it without you this time; those Friday morning crit sessions were times well spent.
To all the writers in the crime community, thank you for being such a supportive and creative bunch. Especially Vaseem Khan, for your generous encouragement, and Ruth Ware, for being the ideal person to bounce ideas off if somebody needs to be killed in a way a police pathologist might not be able to reconstruct. Don’t get on Ruth’s bad side, is all I can say.
The Queen’s year of state visits in 1957 was a busy one and I sourced the finer details of her schedule from many places, not least the Pathé newsreels of the day. But a favourite resource for its (rare) reliability on exactly where the Queen went each day and what she wore, was the Royal Watcher blog. Thank you, Saad Salman. I’m also grateful for the writing and research of Michelle Morgan (When Marilyn Met the Queen, 2022), and Margaret Forster’s biography of Daphne du Maurier (1993).
As always, I’m grateful to Emily, Sophie, Freddie and Tom. The boys have put up with my very late-night writing to deadlines for fourteen books now, so I owe you a lot. Thank goodness you can make pasta and pesto. And Alex, this is fundamentally a story about love, so you are at the heart of it.
Last but by no means least, I want to say a huge thank you to all my readers. Nothing gives me a thrill more than hearing from someone who has newly discovered the series. I’m especially grateful to the band of subscribers to my author newsletter, who have become part of my life. I’m honoured that these books have lifted so many of you up when you were down. I love hearing your own stories and memories of the Queen, knowing you enjoyed the short stories, and reading your entries to the competitions. Please keep them coming!
You can contact me via my website, at sjbennettbooks.com. It’s always lovely to hear from you.
About the Author
S.J. Bennett was born in Yorkshire and travelled the world as an army child. She had a varied career before her first novel was published when she was 42. Since then, her books have won awards, been optioned for TV, and have been translated into over 20 languages.
She was once asked to interview for the role of Assistant Private Secretary to the Queen and still considers it the job that got away. A curious royal watcher for many years, she lives in London, where she can often be found haunting its palaces, museums, galleries and libraries. She currently writes the ‘Her Majesty the Queen Investigates’ series.
You can find her on Instagram @sophiabennett_writer, on Facebook at SJBennettAuthor and on Twitter @sophiabennett.
To receive Royal Correspondence about the Her Majesty the Queen Investigates series – including book news and research updates – sign up at bit.ly/SJBennett
The Windsor Knot
A Three Dog Problem
Murder Most Royal
Letter from the author
Hello!
Thank you for picking up A Death in Diamonds.
Four books into the series . . . I’m starting to feel that Queen Elizabeth II really did solve mysteries in her spare time. She’d have been so good at it.
This book started with my research into the year the Queen met Marilyn Monroe. I was going to set it in 1956, but the more I looked into the period, the more the following year reminded me of the times we’re living in now. The UK was living through a period of austerity, was questioning its place in Europe, and was sending out the royals on bridge-building visits abroad. I realised it was the year the Queen visited Paris and New York – and the die was cast.
It may be book four, but A Death in Diamonds is part of the origin story of my fictional sleuth. It’s not the first time Elizabeth has solved a crime, but it’s the first time she’s recruited an assistant private secretary to help her – the role I once interviewed for myself. I know many readers love this idea of a secret club of female sleuthing sidekicks, ending with Captain Rozie Oshodi in 2016, and this is where that club started: with Joan McGraw.
Joan is based in part on my grandmothers: Joan Price, formerly McGrath, née Cuthbert; and Jessie Pett, née Adamson. Joan grew up in Urmston, Manchester, left school at 16 and worked as a secretary before marrying and moving south. Jessie grew up on a farm in Aberdeenshire, in the days when the land was still worked with horses, became nanny to the children of a wealthy Scottish family, and eventually married my Grandad, whom she met where he worked, at the Grosvenor House Hotel. Both were strong, multi-talented, capable women, whom I miss very much. Neither got to work at Bletchley Park, but each of them, I think, would have taken it in her stride.