Above the Bay of Angels: A Novel

by Rhys Bowen

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  A few years ago, I was researching another book on the Riviera. I was on the hill in Cimiez above Nice when I saw a magnificent building. I asked a gardener if it was a hotel. “It used to be, madame,” he said. “Now it is only apartments.” Then he added, “It was built for your queen, you know.”

  “Queen Elizabeth?” I could not have been more surprised.

  “No, Queen Victoria. She used to come here every winter, so they built the hotel for her.”

  I had known nothing of this. I started to research it and found that Queen Victoria visited the Riviera during her last years, first staying with friends in villas until the Hotel Excelsior Regina was built for her. Her party took over a whole wing with a separate entrance. During my research in Nice, I was shown the brochure featuring the original design of the hotel, and how the rooms were allocated. That was when I saw that she brought a team of cooks with her, and I wondered if one of those cooks was a young woman. And so I have acquired cookbooks and menus from one of the queen’s chefs with recipes for those ridiculously fancy meals.

  Many aspects of the story are true: her Indian munshi, Abdul Karim, his association with a leader of the Muslim League, and his final fall from grace are factual. The members of her party are also true, except for Princess Sophie and Count Wilhelm. The queen really did go out in her little donkey cart, pulled by a donkey she had rescued from a peasant. She loved to attend the Carnival and go on picnics. And throw flowers at handsome young men in the parades. I have many photographs of her enjoying her time in Nice.

  When she was dying a few years later, she said to her doctor, “If only I could go back to Nice, I know I could get well again.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks, as always, to Danielle Marshall and the whole author team at Lake Union who make working with them such a joy. Also thanks to my brilliant and wonderful agents, Meg Ruley and Christina Hogrebe. You ladies are the best! Finally thanks to my husband, John, for his editing skills, his love and his support.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © Douglas Sonders

  Rhys Bowen is the New York Times bestselling author of more than forty novels, including The Victory Garden, The Tuscan Child, and the World War II–based In Farleigh Field, the winner of the Left Coast Crime Award for Best Historical Mystery Novel and the Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel. Bowen’s work has won twenty honors to date, including multiple Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. Her books have been translated into many languages, and she has fans around the world, including seventeen thousand Facebook followers. A transplanted Brit, Bowen divides her time between California and Arizona. To learn more about the author, visit www.rhysbowen.com.