The Impeccable Inquisitor Blundell
Cressida Wren
He's the worst investigator in the kingdom. She's been solving his cases for three years. Neither of them expected to fall in love.
In the Middling Kingdom of Chiddingtonia, magic runs on sincerity. A polite word can power a ward. A heartfelt apology can break a curse. And a strongly worded letter can put you in hospital.
Inspector Reginald Blundell has the longest active career in the kingdom's Inquisitorial Office, not because he's good, but because every case he's been assigned has somehow resolved itself in spite of him. He quotes Sherlock Holmes (badly). He carries an enchanted magnifying glass (which he once used to set fire to a crime scene). He has a signature move of dramatically removing his spectacles, except he needs them to see, so he then walks into things.
Warden-Sergeant Priya Okafor graduated first in her class from the kingdom's most prestigious magical academy. She was promised a brilliant career. She was assigned to Blundell. She has been solving every one of his cases for three years without him noticing. Or so she thinks.
When the beloved owner of Chiddington's only tearoom is found dead in her locked kitchen, face-down in a Victoria sponge that is still floating, Priya must navigate a baffling mystery, a dangerous theft of living enchantments, and the growing, ungovernable, deeply inconvenient realisation that the most incompetent man in the kingdom might also be the most extraordinary.
The Impeccable Inquisitor Blundell is a novel about the magic of meaning it, the courage of getting it wrong, and the alarming discovery that love is not a filing problem.