What if the Queen solved crimes?

Queen Elizabeth II had the most reproduced image in the history of the world  

We think we know her so well. She was a young monarch, an elderly stateswoman, one of the few skirts in a sea of trousers among world leaders, with more experience than most of them put together.

She was a much-loved mother, grandmother and great-grandmother of - let’s face it - a fairly dysfunctional family. She had vast wealth and very little time to herself. She worked every day of the year except Christmas Day and Boxing Day, and was more widely travelled than anyone in her generation. Wherever she went, up to a million people would line the streets to see her. She was in the news a lot.

And yet, the Queen didn’t give interviews. We think we know her, but we don’t.

What if this very, very famous woman had a secret life? She was intelligent, observant and curious about people. She had access to any expert in the world, knew the state’s deepest secrets, and was famously discreet, so people from staff to state leaders confided in her.

Imagine if she used all these attributes to solve crimes.

I’m SJ Bennett, and that’s the idea I had in 2018, when the Queen and Prince Philip, at 97, was getting ready to retire, Harry and Meghan were lining up to get married, and all was well - it seemed - in the royal world.

As soon as I pictured the Queen as a detective, I realised a lot of the work in creating the world was done for me: lavish settings at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace, eccentric visitors, a hard-working household and a wide range of animals with walk-on parts (or race-to-the-finish-line parts), plus endless opportunities for crime and its solution.

And so this series was born. Back in the nineties I interviewed for the job of the Queen’s Assistant Private Secretary (APS), and the world is as accurate as I can make it. Some readers are disappointed that Her Majesty doesn’t sneak around London after dark, armed with a deerstalker hat and a magnifying glass. She doesn’t. She fits in the work of the ‘little grey cells’ in between her royal duties, and sends her fictional APS to the leg work where necessary. She exchanges loving, exasperated banter with Prince Philip, her husband of many decades, and dresses up to meet Michael Gove and the Bishop of Leicester, as (really) scheduled in her calendar. Philip’s thoughts on some of her audiences are just about printable.

Occasionally, someone ‘dies of a heart attack’ at Windsor Castle or ‘accidentally drops a glass and falls on the shards’ by the pool at Buckingham Palace. Or a severed hand is found on the beach near Sandringham. That’s all the public know, but we, the inner circle of ‘Her Majesty the Queen Investigates’, know better. How did she keep her secret skills private? You’ll have to read the series to find out.

More than half a million copies sold around the world.

Click on a book cover in the banner at the top to find out more about it.

The books are translated into many languages. Check out the Translations page to see the Queen on tour.

This website also contains answers to the questions you might have (Did I meet her? Did she read these novels?), a press pack, some reading recommendations, a gallery of images, a royal scone recipe (click the link and scroll down for it), some book club guides, book recommendations and much more. Please make yourself at home.

And perhaps you’d like to sign up to my author newsletter at the bottom of this page, which gives a greater insight into the royal world, along with competitions and a link to an exclusive short story.

Look out for Book 5 The Queen Who Came in From the Cold, out November 2025

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Click here for your Book Club Kit of The Windsor Knot courtesy of William Morrow

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