M, King's Bodyguard, Leonard - B+

         Chief Inspector Melville is high up in London's Metropolitan Police and is personal advisor to the royal family. This excellent novel is set in the week before Victoria's funeral in 1901. London is inundated with royalty, including the Kaiser, King Leopold of Belgium, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and dozens of others.    Unfortunately, anarchists and assassins are also present and on the hunt for royals, with Wilhelm as the prime target. Melville teams up with the Kaiser's man, Gustav Steinhauer, in pursuit of a man named Akushku, perhaps a Russian, but certainly a skilled murderer and plotter. This is a historical novel as good as they get, and actually is based on an exhaustive biography of Melville and Steinhauer's memoirs.