A MOURNING WEDDING

Plagued with morning sickness, Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher (Die Laughing, 2003, etc.) still manages to offer her detective husband unsolicited yet pertinent information that helps him solve a string of murders.

Lucy Fotheringay is beginning to find her upcoming wedding to Lord Gerald Bincombe at her grandfather’s country estate a royal pain. Because the Earl of Haverhill was one of 11 children, she has countless relatives to please. Aunt Maud frets endlessly about Uncle Aubrey’s health. Imperious cousin Rupert sports a tiresomely social-climbing wife. Dotty cousin Angela Devenish can barely take time from rescuing stray dogs to attend the lavish affair. Angela’s brother Edward has affairs of his own to divert him. Even Lucy’s mother insists that her giggly pubescent cousins Erica and Ursula simply must be in the bridal party. But most fearsome of all is great-aunt Lady Eva Devenish, who keeps in her journal family secrets that would shame any lord or lady and uses them to keep her fractious family in line—until someone strangles her with a cheap nylon stocking. Then it’s up to Lucy’s friend Daisy to convince her husband, Scotland Yard detective Alec Fletcher, to step into bumbling Inspector Crummle’s shoes before he steps on too many aristocratic toes—but not before there are more aristocratic corpses.

Daisy’s in rare form here: soothing and smoothing, but all the while snooping as only she can.