Just looked at a Simenon mystery,
but it is one without Maigret in the cast.
An examination of the bourgeouisie (whew! haven't had to spell THAT in some time)
at its most suffocating.

A little more bracing was the latter half (separate volume) of
The Wheel of Fortune, in which author Susan Howatch
takes those Plantagenets -- Edward, John, Richard, two Henrys --
and makes of them a Welsh dynasty
in the early twentieth century, wars and all.
And what she does with Richard II -- whee!
She let rip with that fella.