DIE LAUGHING

Back from her American honeymoon, Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher (Mistletoe and Murder, 2002, etc.) confronts the horrors of domestic life in St. John’s Wood, along with the more pleasurable pastime of helping her Scotland Yard husband solve murders.

Daisy finds her latest corpse when a toothache takes her to local dentist Raymond Talmadge. The corpse is Mr. Talmadge, who expired in his dental chair while engaged in some illicit nitrous sniffing. Nurse Hensted is aghast, Mrs. Talmadge is prostrate, but Daisy is suspicious, especially when she sees signs of bandage adhesive around Talmadge’s mouth. And sure enough—as DS Tommy Tring and DC Ernie Piper concur when the police arrive—the missus is usually right when it’s murder. So right that, to Alec Fletcher’s bemusement and his mother’s consternation, his bride befriends Daphne Talmadge in hope of ferreting out a motive. Sure enough, Daphne confides that the child she’s carrying belongs to her lover, Lord Henry Creighton, while momentarily indiscreet housekeeper Hilda Kidd grumbles that “what’s sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose”: Mr. Talmadge was seeing Gwen Walker, wife of the very military Major Francis Walker. But to Mother Fletcher’s further outrage, Daisy will confide nothing to the local matrons who besiege her with invitations to lunch and tea, preferring to keep what she knows for best friends Melanie Germond and Sakari Prasad—and of course her beloved Alec.

East, west—home’s best for the redoubtable Daisy.