VOWS AND VILLAINY

Two weddings and a murder.

American expatriate Molly Kimball has taken time off from the bookstore she co-owns in Cambridge to spend time at Hazelhurst House, where her friend Daisy Watson is soon to be married. Molly tours the gardens with Daisy and her mother as well as the estate’s owner, Lady Asha Scott, who’s the mother of Molly’s boyfriend, Kieran, when they come upon Sir Nigel Peck floating in the moat. Lady Asha’s other son, Alan, hears the commotion and leaps into the moat to find Sir Nigel dead with a nasty head wound. Sir Nigel was the big name in a Shakespearean acting troupe of which Alan’s a member; they’ve been staying at Hazelhurst for the summer while they stage a play. Sir Nigel recently caused a scandal by mistreating actors at a school so severely that one of them died. In addition to friends of the boy who died, Sir Nigel was disliked by almost everyone he ever worked with, even his wife. Daisy’s mother, a theater costumer who’s helping the production while making the wedding party dresses, knows where all the bodies are buried. Molly’s Aunt Violet is also getting married despite the disapproval of her future mother-in-law, who’s 95. A series of threatening texts addressed to Molly and others only makes her more eager to solve the crime, but her involvement in earlier murder cases has put her in a rocky relationship with the police. Between two weddings, her work at the bookstore, and furthering her romantic relationship, Molly’s hard-pressed to question people and follow clues in her hunt for a killer.

Plenty of suspects float through a lovely British landscape as they slowly reveal their secrets.