Based on a true story, M, King's Bodyguard is a thriller about anarchy and assassination in Edwardian London, and one detective's mission to preserve the life of his king and prevent a bloody war in Europe.
... a well-paced, tightly plotted, deeply researched exercise that suggests the kind of family franchise one might actually want to keep reading ... Leonard intelligently grounds the plot in the geopolitical paranoia of fin-de-siecle Europe, where anarchists have already claimed the lives of Alexander II of Russia, the Austrian Empress, and the prime minister of Spain, and where one tinder threatens to blow the whole chain of alliances sky high ... In short, it’s all great fun ... The research can sound awkward to the modern ear, and Melville’s Irish brogue can tilt to the vaudevillian...Meanwhile, the dead city, in its gorgeous squalor, lives.
The story is both tense and methodical in equal measure ... Leonard delivers a crisp procedural elevated by intriguing characters on both sides of the law.
