Bertie and the Seven Bodies — Peter Lovesey

The second entry of the Bertie, Prince of Wales mystery series, featuring future King Edward VII, Albert Edward, as an amateur sleuth solving suspicious murders in Victorian England.

Bertie, Prince of Wales, is delighted to be invited by Lady Amelia, a recently widowed young woman, to Desborough Hall for a week-long shooting party. The eleven other motley guests include a poet, a chaplain, and an Amazon explorer. The party promises a week of shooting, socializing, and feasting, but these expectations are soon shattered as one of the guests collapses face first into her dessert and dies before the night is out. At first, this death is believed to be an accident, and the party continues with their hunting plans for the week. But when another guest turns up dead the very next day, Bertie realizes that the deaths cannot be coincidence.