After the four join forces to fight the Cardinal’s guard, they go off and celebrate, a celebration that is quickly cut short by the discovery of the body of a Musketeer in the alley. To their surprise, the body is that of a young woman, and even more to their surprise, the young woman bears a striking resemblance to Anne, the young queen of France.

The guards quickly realize what the murder of the Queen could mean and what additional consequences the reasons for her being out on her own, if discovered, could bring. The Musketeers appeal to a priest they can trust to hide the body while they track down the objects on her body and try to ascertain her identity. Working in pairs, the four use contacts they can trust to decipher a letter and learn the history of a tiny ring that was clutched in her hand.

Fairly certain that the woman is not the Queen, now the quartet begins investigating why someone would want to kill the Queen’s look-alike, and did that person think they were killing the Queen instead of her double and if so, is Queen Anne really in mortal danger?

Musketeer fans, especially those who adored the adventures as children, will be pleased with this faithful rendering of characters and setting. The politics of the time are important to the storyline, both to explain how D’Artagnan was admitted to the circle of three and as a possible motive for the murder. The Musketeers have secrets in their past, and some are revealed and some may form the basis of future adventures. The mystery, once the corpse’s identity is learned, is not a difficult one, and readers looking for a more difficult challenge may be disappointed as means, motive and opportunity are relatively obvious, as is who is behind the plot.

A fun, if not especially taxing read, Death of a Musketeerwill capture a bit of the imagination of the adventurer in all.

--Jennifer Monahan Winberry