Having recently enjoyed a light mystery set in the historical Cold War era of young Queen Elizabeth, aboard the Royal Train, I was delighted to climb back aboard the transport. The modern era is no less dangerous and convoluted in THE HAWK IS DEAD.   Her Majesty, Queen Camilla, is travelling by Royal Train with her entourage. They are heading to a couple of hospices and a theatre event in the south of England. The pros and cons of helicopters are discussed, but the train suits a larger group of staff, and Camilla doesn’t like the choppers. I very much enjoy the insights into the train drivers and railway engineering, as an ambush is placed at a critical point. The train is derailed inside a long tunnel through the South Downs. Fortunately, nobody is badly hurt. As the passengers leave the tunnel, they don’t know that a sniper lies in wait.   Detective Superintendent Roy Grace receives an urgent summons. One of the Royal Household staff, Sir Peregrine Greaves, has been shot dead, and as he was standing next to Camilla, it seems likely that Her Majesty was the actual target. Grace is in charge of the patch of turf, but there’s a polite war with the coppers of the Met because Buckingham Palace is in London, plus the Royal guards are involved. But nobody can deny that Sir Peregrine died where he did, so that’s Grace’s case anyway. Deciding to take nothing for granted, Grace questions whether Sir Peregrine might have been the intended target, and if so, why? He can’t ignore the possibility that anti-monarchists might have wanted to kill the Queen.   A few times a year, I feel highly privileged in my fiction reading, and this is one of them – we get to walk through Buckingham Palace, observe the massive and valuable art collection, stroll across the lawn, and visit the King’s drawing room. With his sidekick, Branson, Grace is summoned to see King Charles, who is greatly concerned for his wife’s safety. They are given free run of the Palace grounds to question staffers, aided by the chief of the household, Sir Tommy Magellan-Lacey.   Grace, with the weight of centuries of history and culture upon his shoulders, feels star-struck but continues with his police procedural work, telling his wife Cleo just enough to explain why he can’t take her and their kids on a picnic. Readers will gain the atmosphere without the cost of paying to tour the Palace, and gain a twisty mystery to solve as well. I felt some details were told to us a little early, providing a motive when Grace still knew of none. Otherwise, THE HAWK IS DEAD turns out to be tremendous fun crime fiction, densely researched and peopled with real characters as well as inventions. This is the twenty-first case in the Roy Grace series, with the detective turning down promotion so he can keep solving murders instead of hugging desks. A new reader could start here, and those who’ve read some of the cases can easily pick up the threads. All aboard the Royal Train! Peter James didn’t say, but I do hope it was mended.