Product Description

Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales, was just an ordinary young woman when she was selected to be the prince's bride and future queen. Her wedding was a world-wide sensation. But she was deceived and betrayed before the honeymoon was over. Five months after a fairy-tale wedding, pregnant with the heir to the throne, she threw herself down a flight of stairs. Suicide attempts, illicit affairs, and paranoid beliefs that there were plots by the royals to kill her became the norm as the fairy tale turned into a horror story. After suffering degradation and humiliation at the hands of her husband, the princess takes the ultimate revenge. Afraid that her own attorney's may be lying to her, the princess reaches across the Atlantic and hires Marlowe James, a woman who doesn't put a price on loyalty. Marlowe has been dubbed the "burning-bed lawyer" by the news media because of her successful defence of women who kill their abusive husbands. In defending the princess, Marlowe not only has to do battle in the Old Bailey with barristers loyal to the Crown, she has to come to grips with her own feelings about a woman who was handed everything any woman would desire. The explosive tale that will be exposed in the courtroom is one of jealous rage and unfulfilled desires of sexual deceit by one of the most powerful men on earth, and of bloody revenge enacted by a woman scorned.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #491096 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

Customer Reviews

"Blood Royal" is surprisingly good, but not flawless
The latest Robbins book I read was "Descent from Xanadu" (1984), which was one of the worst books I've read in a long time. "Blood Royal" is Robbins' sixth, or so, posthumous novel and my guess it that co-writer Podrug deserves most of the credit.

The main story is about the American lawyer who's hired to defend the princess of wales who has killed her husband, the prince. There are a number of subplots, a mystery about frozen bodies turning up in Westminster Abeby, and the flashback story of Marlowe's life. True to Robbins's style, there's also lots of gratuitous sex "You must be a knight, you have a long lance). While some of the subplots, especially the mystery, are not fully developed, they kept my interest. When there were about 20 pages left, I was wondering how the book would be able to tie tie it all together so quickly, but the ending was a nice surprise.

The book does have its flaws. Some dialogue should have been polished and some obvious mistakes should have been discovered by the editor, most notably one chapter where the narrative suddenly switches from first person to third person, and back to first person again. But the flaws aren't big enough to destroy the book, and I found "Blood Royal" to be a surprisingly enjoyable read.