Blue Blood Will Out

At a for-profit ancestral pile, Bognor seeks an earl-killing sniper

As real estate moguls slice and dice the great properties of the English countryside, the rambling grounds of Abney House are kept intact by being turned into a sort of theme park of the aristocracy for the public—complete with cafeteria, sailing museum, and safari-themed shooting gallery. But the theme isn’t complete until a visiting earl is felled by a sniper’s bullet, giving Abney House what every manor needs: a blue-blooded murder. Normally this killing would not fall under the jurisdiction of Board of Trade investigator Simon Bognor, but the downed earl was tied up in a top-secret international exchange, and the killing may have had a political motive. As Bognor settles into life at the old estate, he is forced to decide which will be more dangerous: the sharpshooting assassin, or the tedious aristocratic company.