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Death Wore a Diadem
A finishing school matron's plans to use a visit by Empress Eugenie of France as a social stepping stone meets with disaster when theft and murder run rampant in the school and a jaded pupil must search the streets of Edinburgh to catch the culprit
220 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 13, 2022
Please find an old copy of this gothic and sapphic joy of a book. What’s not to love.
I read this in the 1990s and have wanted to read it again but could not remember author/title but today Reddit What'sThatBook found it for me and I've ordered a copy.
This is a truly wonderful book and I don’t say that lightly. It’s gripping, mysterious, exciting and erotic all at the same time while being written with such elegant sparseness and sensuality. I remember it changed my life as a young reader.
It’s out of print but please track down a copy and devour. Then you can tank me for recommending it.
I read this in the 1990s and have wanted to read it again but could not remember author/title but today Reddit What'sThatBook found it for me and I've ordered a copy.
This is a truly wonderful book and I don’t say that lightly. It’s gripping, mysterious, exciting and erotic all at the same time while being written with such elegant sparseness and sensuality. I remember it changed my life as a young reader.
It’s out of print but please track down a copy and devour. Then you can tank me for recommending it.
December 31, 2021
I wasn't sure what to expect but this was well written, engaging, and pacey. Not always what happens with obscure Women's Press books from the 80s. A good mystery, and historical social commentary with a hint of the absurd.
Read
June 18, 2020Christabel MacKenzie is a 17-year-old student attending the Scottish Institute for the Education of the Daughters of Gentlefolk in Edinburgh. Like most of the students there, Christabel’s family is well to do. In fact, her aunt is a friend of the Empress Eugenie of France. It is when the Empress decides to visit Edinburgh—and the Institute—that bad things start to happen. First, a replica of the Empress’ jeweled diadem goes missing, then a servant girl is pushed down a flight of stairs after a tryst with her paramour.
Christabel, concerned about both the theft and the murder, begins to ask questions. She is helped by Eleanor Stewart, her botany tutor at the Institute. But they are more than just student and tutor. Christabel has a terrific crush on Eleanor—only a year her senior—that is fully reciprocated. So when Christabel deliberately makes bad scores on her science tests, Eleanor is given permission to give her private lessons at Christabel’s home. This comes in handy because it gives the two young women not only time alone together, but the freedom to investigate both inside and outside the school.
This is a rather delicious book that deserves way more attention and more reviews than it has garnered thus far. Its publication date—1989—shows it to be far ahead of its tune. The relationship between Christabel and Eleanor is very believable and touching. Although their intimacies are limited to quick kisses and phrases like “They put their arms around each other and one thing led to another,” we do believe in their love for each other and are rooting for them all the way.
In the process of the novel, the author goes into some detail about the Institute, which was one of the first to provide more than a cursory, parlor education for girls. We learn that not only was this unusual, but it was mostly frowned upon. Senior instructors had to have college degrees, which most women didn’t have at the time so that only men taught the higher levers of study. And Eleanor’s passion to become a full-fledged doctor is treated with derision by the male doctors she comes in contact with. The intricacies of the Institute are well set up, as are the plot and the resolution of the mystery. I especially liked the author’s rendering of Scottish dialect.
This is the first Young Adult lesbian mystery I have come across. In fact, it may be the only YA lesbian mystery, although I would very much like to read others. Give it a thumb’s up with every hand you have. And check out a fascinating interview with the author here.
Note: I read the first--and probably the only--hardback printing of this novel.
Another Note: This review is included in my book The Art of the Lesbian Mystery Novel, along with information on over 930 other lesbian mysteries by over 310 authors.
Christabel, concerned about both the theft and the murder, begins to ask questions. She is helped by Eleanor Stewart, her botany tutor at the Institute. But they are more than just student and tutor. Christabel has a terrific crush on Eleanor—only a year her senior—that is fully reciprocated. So when Christabel deliberately makes bad scores on her science tests, Eleanor is given permission to give her private lessons at Christabel’s home. This comes in handy because it gives the two young women not only time alone together, but the freedom to investigate both inside and outside the school.
This is a rather delicious book that deserves way more attention and more reviews than it has garnered thus far. Its publication date—1989—shows it to be far ahead of its tune. The relationship between Christabel and Eleanor is very believable and touching. Although their intimacies are limited to quick kisses and phrases like “They put their arms around each other and one thing led to another,” we do believe in their love for each other and are rooting for them all the way.
In the process of the novel, the author goes into some detail about the Institute, which was one of the first to provide more than a cursory, parlor education for girls. We learn that not only was this unusual, but it was mostly frowned upon. Senior instructors had to have college degrees, which most women didn’t have at the time so that only men taught the higher levers of study. And Eleanor’s passion to become a full-fledged doctor is treated with derision by the male doctors she comes in contact with. The intricacies of the Institute are well set up, as are the plot and the resolution of the mystery. I especially liked the author’s rendering of Scottish dialect.
This is the first Young Adult lesbian mystery I have come across. In fact, it may be the only YA lesbian mystery, although I would very much like to read others. Give it a thumb’s up with every hand you have. And check out a fascinating interview with the author here.
Note: I read the first--and probably the only--hardback printing of this novel.
Another Note: This review is included in my book The Art of the Lesbian Mystery Novel, along with information on over 930 other lesbian mysteries by over 310 authors.
May 27, 2025
Death Wore a Diadem is interesting because it’s the book Ioana McGregor wrote after quitting her job as a teacher, deciding to no-longer write children’s books and embrace her lesbian activism more openly. It’s billed as a ‘maverick historical whodunnit which satirises the snobbishness of genteel society.’ The blurb talks about how the main character, Christabel, ‘enlists the help of her lesbian lover and combs the foggy streets of the capital in search of a brutal killer’.
Set in 1860, it sounds like a fun proto-Sarah Walters type of lesbian, crime fun. The blurb is misleading, however. The book is far more interested in satirising ‘the snobbishness of genteel society’ than it is being a knockabout crime romp. Christabel and her lesbian lover do very little detecting and it’s discovered pretty early on that the death is not the result of a brutal killer as much as a clumsy thief. The chief antagonism in the book isn’t the forces of law verses those against it, it’s Christabel the school student against the headmistress who wishes to cover things up.
It took me a while to realise what the book actually was, as I found the first half to be a very interesting look at the dynamics of a revolutionary school for girls in Edinburgh. At the head is Margaret Napier, who has detailed lists of all the transgressions of staff and pupil alike. She’s hoping to channel the visit of Empress Eugénie of France into a huge PR coup for the school and to cement herself at the top of it. She rules firmly, pressing her will on all the teachers, ready to bring up minor indiscretions. Her second in command, Miss Erroll, is a firm protestant and gets ill at the thought of the Empress’s visit. Her biggest headache is Christabel, who is defiant and has contracted a friendship with one of the teach assistants that might not be seen as wholesome. The school is leant a paste replica of a diadem, this goes missing.. later on one of the undermaids is found dead with one of the paste jewels in her bag. This seems cut and dry to Miss Napier, but Christabel won’t have the maid, Peggy, blamed for stealing the diadem.
I assumed all these school dynamics were set up for us to solve the mystery, which they sort of were, but while I thought they were the base for thrills later, the dynamics were the book. The mystery is very supplemental to the politicking within the school. What’s more, the sizzling lesbian romance never gets more raunchy than ‘one thing led to another’.
Had the blurb been more explicit that this was a book about the society of a boarding school, with the theft and death of the maid as incidents within that, I’d have found it more enjoyable. There are many characters and they are all well delineated, with interesting relationships and powerplays, but I kept waiting for the book to get all lesbian girl detective, and it never really did.
If anything, it seems Iona McGregor was working through her gripes with being a teacher, enjoying creating the monstrous headteacher in all her petty glory, the flighty and pretentious teachers, the vapid schoolgirls. If this was her big, freeing novel (she turned to writing study-guides after this) the demon she wanted to exorcise was not having to write for children, or of concealing her lesbianism, it was how annoying working in a school can be.
Set in 1860, it sounds like a fun proto-Sarah Walters type of lesbian, crime fun. The blurb is misleading, however. The book is far more interested in satirising ‘the snobbishness of genteel society’ than it is being a knockabout crime romp. Christabel and her lesbian lover do very little detecting and it’s discovered pretty early on that the death is not the result of a brutal killer as much as a clumsy thief. The chief antagonism in the book isn’t the forces of law verses those against it, it’s Christabel the school student against the headmistress who wishes to cover things up.
It took me a while to realise what the book actually was, as I found the first half to be a very interesting look at the dynamics of a revolutionary school for girls in Edinburgh. At the head is Margaret Napier, who has detailed lists of all the transgressions of staff and pupil alike. She’s hoping to channel the visit of Empress Eugénie of France into a huge PR coup for the school and to cement herself at the top of it. She rules firmly, pressing her will on all the teachers, ready to bring up minor indiscretions. Her second in command, Miss Erroll, is a firm protestant and gets ill at the thought of the Empress’s visit. Her biggest headache is Christabel, who is defiant and has contracted a friendship with one of the teach assistants that might not be seen as wholesome. The school is leant a paste replica of a diadem, this goes missing.. later on one of the undermaids is found dead with one of the paste jewels in her bag. This seems cut and dry to Miss Napier, but Christabel won’t have the maid, Peggy, blamed for stealing the diadem.
I assumed all these school dynamics were set up for us to solve the mystery, which they sort of were, but while I thought they were the base for thrills later, the dynamics were the book. The mystery is very supplemental to the politicking within the school. What’s more, the sizzling lesbian romance never gets more raunchy than ‘one thing led to another’.
Had the blurb been more explicit that this was a book about the society of a boarding school, with the theft and death of the maid as incidents within that, I’d have found it more enjoyable. There are many characters and they are all well delineated, with interesting relationships and powerplays, but I kept waiting for the book to get all lesbian girl detective, and it never really did.
If anything, it seems Iona McGregor was working through her gripes with being a teacher, enjoying creating the monstrous headteacher in all her petty glory, the flighty and pretentious teachers, the vapid schoolgirls. If this was her big, freeing novel (she turned to writing study-guides after this) the demon she wanted to exorcise was not having to write for children, or of concealing her lesbianism, it was how annoying working in a school can be.
May 4, 2023
The visit of Empress Eugenie of France to Edinburgh is the biggest thing to happen to the city in 1860, and the staff and pupils of Mrs Napier’s school are full of excitement. While Mrs Napier plans for royal approval, Miss Erroll fears the pernicious influence of the Church of Rome. Meanwhile rebel student Christabel MacKenzie and maid Peggy Munro are more concerned with two very different love affairs. Passion and violence are waiting to be unleashed…
Iona McGregor wrote several other atmospheric pieces of historical fiction, and is particularly good at evoking the Edinburgh of centuries past with a real historical flair. This book is usually described as a detective story/mystery/whodunnit, but that is misleading: although crimes are committed, a professional detective investigates and amateurs push for justice, the detective plot does not take precedence over other narrative strands, and I found its resolution disappointing although I enjoyed the detecting. This book is really about people, digging into the characters and giving us insight into everyone other than the Empress Eugenie herself. At its centre is Christabel MacKenzie, whose relationship with Eleanor Stewart is articulated as both of them would have articulated it. It’s beautifully done, and as others have said this is a Young Adult lesbian story written at a time when no-one in Scotland could have imagined that would become a genre of its own. The world of the school is also well done, and Mrs Napier reminds me of Mrs Nipson of What Katy Did At School. My one quibble with this book is that McGregor writes with insight into so many characters’ lives across a range of social classes, except for the great mass of girls at the school and indeed some of the staff, who seem to be judged very harshly for the crime of being bourgeois and concerned about their position. Christine’s rebel stance is inextricably linked to her aristocratic background, which is what allows her to defy the conventions of the little world of school, and that could have done with a little more questioning. It’s interesting to set this book beside McGregor’s An Edinburgh Reel, another book about a teenage girl in historical Edinburgh, but definitely a children’s book in the genres of its time - today they could be rebranded as a Young Adult historical set showing how girls’ lives and Edinburgh itself changed across the centuries.
Iona McGregor wrote several other atmospheric pieces of historical fiction, and is particularly good at evoking the Edinburgh of centuries past with a real historical flair. This book is usually described as a detective story/mystery/whodunnit, but that is misleading: although crimes are committed, a professional detective investigates and amateurs push for justice, the detective plot does not take precedence over other narrative strands, and I found its resolution disappointing although I enjoyed the detecting. This book is really about people, digging into the characters and giving us insight into everyone other than the Empress Eugenie herself. At its centre is Christabel MacKenzie, whose relationship with Eleanor Stewart is articulated as both of them would have articulated it. It’s beautifully done, and as others have said this is a Young Adult lesbian story written at a time when no-one in Scotland could have imagined that would become a genre of its own. The world of the school is also well done, and Mrs Napier reminds me of Mrs Nipson of What Katy Did At School. My one quibble with this book is that McGregor writes with insight into so many characters’ lives across a range of social classes, except for the great mass of girls at the school and indeed some of the staff, who seem to be judged very harshly for the crime of being bourgeois and concerned about their position. Christine’s rebel stance is inextricably linked to her aristocratic background, which is what allows her to defy the conventions of the little world of school, and that could have done with a little more questioning. It’s interesting to set this book beside McGregor’s An Edinburgh Reel, another book about a teenage girl in historical Edinburgh, but definitely a children’s book in the genres of its time - today they could be rebranded as a Young Adult historical set showing how girls’ lives and Edinburgh itself changed across the centuries.
March 13, 2024
Took a while to get going, but I loved the second half!
December 2, 2011
On 17th November 1860 The Scotsman reported:
“Since hapless Mary Queen of Scots landed at Leith three hundred years ago, no Royal lady of France has visited the Scottish capital. The Empress Eugenie seeks the enjoyment of strictest privacy as aiding attainment of the main object of her visit – the renewal of her impaired health. The visit recalls ancient days of firm alliance between France and Scotland; and between the two peoples a hereditary liking yet continues, which might well, were occasion suitable, find especially warm expression towards the Empress Eugenie, seeing that she herself is of Scotch descent, and so adds to those of royalty the yet more potent and kindlier claims of kindred.”
James McLevy, a retired police detective, was walking his dog when he saw the royal train arrive on a dark, cold, winter evening. He feared trouble, and he was right.
Because at the Scottish institute for the Education of the Daughters of Gentlefolk the Lady Superintendent, Margaret Napier, was working out how she could use the visit to her advantage.
She managed to secure a promise of a visit from the Empress, to see her girls perform a tableau. And the loan of a copy of the Empress’s Grecian diadem to be used in the tableau. It was a paste copy, but it was completely indistinguishable from the real thing ….
It might have been a triumph, but the diadem disappeared.
And then Peggy, the school’s laundry maid, was found. Murdered. With the diadem in her bag.
Mrs Napier was swift to blame Peggy, and desperate to avoid any scandal around her school. But she had reckoned without Christabel.
Christabel was in her last year of school and she was ready to fly. She was headstrong and wilful; she was bright and charming. And, as a heroine, she was simply irresistible.
Christabel wanted to know the truth. And so did Eleanor, a junior teacher who so wanted to become a doctor. She was just a few years older than Christabel, and they loved each other dearly. They made a charming couple.
Neither believed that Peggy was a thief. And both believed that she should have justice.
They set out to identify the thief and the killer …
Iona McGregor has constructed a wonderfully entertaining mystery. There’s a wonderful cast, of schoolgirls, teachers, maids, parents, detectives. The period and the city come to life. And fun was poked at the snobbishness of genteel society.
There were moments when the author’s social and sexual politics threatened to overwhelm the plot. I nearly put the book down, but in the end curiosity about the characters and the mystery made me carry on.
My curiosity about the mystery was satisfied, but not my curiosity about the characters. They were set up so beautifully, but I was left at the end with not even a hint of what might happen next for Eleanor and Christabel.
Maybe there were plans for to a sequel, or even a series, But this book was published in 1989, and so I have to assume that, if there were, they didn’t come to fruition.
That leaves me with a nice historical mystery, but a novel that feels a little incomplete.
“Since hapless Mary Queen of Scots landed at Leith three hundred years ago, no Royal lady of France has visited the Scottish capital. The Empress Eugenie seeks the enjoyment of strictest privacy as aiding attainment of the main object of her visit – the renewal of her impaired health. The visit recalls ancient days of firm alliance between France and Scotland; and between the two peoples a hereditary liking yet continues, which might well, were occasion suitable, find especially warm expression towards the Empress Eugenie, seeing that she herself is of Scotch descent, and so adds to those of royalty the yet more potent and kindlier claims of kindred.”
James McLevy, a retired police detective, was walking his dog when he saw the royal train arrive on a dark, cold, winter evening. He feared trouble, and he was right.
Because at the Scottish institute for the Education of the Daughters of Gentlefolk the Lady Superintendent, Margaret Napier, was working out how she could use the visit to her advantage.
She managed to secure a promise of a visit from the Empress, to see her girls perform a tableau. And the loan of a copy of the Empress’s Grecian diadem to be used in the tableau. It was a paste copy, but it was completely indistinguishable from the real thing ….
It might have been a triumph, but the diadem disappeared.
And then Peggy, the school’s laundry maid, was found. Murdered. With the diadem in her bag.
Mrs Napier was swift to blame Peggy, and desperate to avoid any scandal around her school. But she had reckoned without Christabel.
Christabel was in her last year of school and she was ready to fly. She was headstrong and wilful; she was bright and charming. And, as a heroine, she was simply irresistible.
Christabel wanted to know the truth. And so did Eleanor, a junior teacher who so wanted to become a doctor. She was just a few years older than Christabel, and they loved each other dearly. They made a charming couple.
Neither believed that Peggy was a thief. And both believed that she should have justice.
They set out to identify the thief and the killer …
Iona McGregor has constructed a wonderfully entertaining mystery. There’s a wonderful cast, of schoolgirls, teachers, maids, parents, detectives. The period and the city come to life. And fun was poked at the snobbishness of genteel society.
There were moments when the author’s social and sexual politics threatened to overwhelm the plot. I nearly put the book down, but in the end curiosity about the characters and the mystery made me carry on.
My curiosity about the mystery was satisfied, but not my curiosity about the characters. They were set up so beautifully, but I was left at the end with not even a hint of what might happen next for Eleanor and Christabel.
Maybe there were plans for to a sequel, or even a series, But this book was published in 1989, and so I have to assume that, if there were, they didn’t come to fruition.
That leaves me with a nice historical mystery, but a novel that feels a little incomplete.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews