Murder in Buckingham Palace is toughest case yet for Brighton's Roy Grace

In the new novel The Hawk Is Dead, Queen Camilla is aboard the Royal Train heading to a charity event in Sussex when disaster strikes – the train is derailed. A tragic accident or a planned attack? When, minutes later, a trusted aide is shot dead by a sniper, the police have their answer. But, despite all the evidence, Roy Grace is not convinced The Queen was the intended target. However he finds himself alone in his suspicions. Fighting against the scepticism of his colleagues and of the Palace itself, Grace pursues his own investigation. But when there is a second murder, the stakes rise even higher…

For Peter, part of the thrill is that it is a book indirectly suggested by Camilla herself.

“It all began about ten years ago when I got an email from a friend saying whatever you're doing you must stop and go out and get a copy of the Daily Mail. I did and there was a picture of the then Duchess of Cornwall with her bookshelf behind her and on the bookshelf there were two Roy Graces, and she said that I was one of her two favourite authors. I wrote a letter to her saying thank you and I got a really chatty handwritten letter back saying that she really loved the Roy Grace books.

“Then during lockdown she started a book club initially called the Duchess’s Reading Room (now the Queen’s Reading Room) which was all about encouraging people to read. It got a huge following. She interviewed authors every day for two weeks on her Instagram page and she wanted to interview me as one of the authors. So she came down to the filming of Grace in Shoreham Harbour and she interviewed me in a warehouse! And she knew more about Grace than I do! She loved the gory bits and the gruesome bits but she was also really good fun to talk to. She met the cast and she's got such a great sense of humour.”

Later, as Queen, Camilla sent Peter a note asking him when he was going to set a Roy Grace book in London: “And I thought ‘Well, that is a royal command!’ If people disobey the Queen’s orders, it doesn't usually end well for them!

“So I thought that if I was going to set a Roy Grace book in London what better place than Buckingham Palace. I came up with an idea about the Royal Collection which is in chaos at the moment because of the renovation going on at the Palace. I wrote a few lines and sent it to a senior member of the royal household. A week later I got an email saying that Queen Camilla loved it and absolutely roared with laughter. It then had to be approved by the Buckingham Palace comms team and they did. They said yes very enthusiastically.

“So I then thought how am I going to get Roy Grace into Buckingham Palace. So I came up with the idea that Queen Camilla was on the royal train and it gets derailed in Sussex which is his manor so therefore technically it becomes his investigation. The Met and the anti-terrorist guys try to muscle in on it but Roy's boss stands by him and he gets to be SIO on the case.

“But I needed to have real insight and knowledge into the palace, and because the comms team had said yes and because the Queen herself was right behind the idea, I had open door to the royal household. I had members of the royal household who were really excited

“(Peter’s wife) Lara and I were given a real in-depth tour of the palace. They showed us everything and it was absolutely fascinating. The palace was and still is in quite a state of disarray because of the renovation but we saw so much and then when I had finished the book I got another three and a half hour tour to basically to check everything is accurate.”

As for including the King and Queen as characters in the book: “I did have help from a number of members of the royal household. I gave them the scenes with the King and the Queen in, and they came back suggesting things. I had a scene where King Charles puts both his hands in his pockets and I was told that no, he would only put one hand in this pocket. And also I used quite a lot of formalities, but I had feedback that that wouldn’t be right and I softened those a bit.

“I wanted to make the royals real. I have fictionalised the other characters but I didn't want to fictionalise Charles and Camilla. I could have had King Eric but I wanted to make it real. I knew I was taking a gamble!

“But at the beginning of March when I had a very early first draft of the book I got my publisher to bind a copy and I had it hand-delivered to the Queen with a note saying ‘If you have any inclination to read the book, please do and let me know if there is anything that you don't like.’ I met her at Clarence House a week later and she came up to me with a huge smile and she said she loved it. I hadn't slept a wink the night before. I said to her is there anything she wanted changed and she said ‘No, not a word.’”

In fact she loved it to the extent that Queen Camilla is now calling some members of the royal household by the names which Peter gave them in the book!

So where does Roy Grace go from here?

“I have just finished the next Roy Grace which is set in a fictitious hotel in Brighton based on the Grand. It was quite strange to go back (to Brighton) and it feels quite hard to top what I did for the research for this last one. It was just so fascinating learning about the palace.”