Death of a Second Wife: A Dotsy Lamb Travel Mystery

Planning a wedding under the Matterhorn can be murder, as shown in Hudgins’s engrossing fourth travel mystery featuring college history professor Dotsy Lamb (after 2010’s Death on the Aegean Queen). Dotsy, the mother of the groom, finds herself in an awkward situation on arrival at Chateau Merz, the Alpine domain of Stephanie Lamb, her ex-husband’s new wife, and Stephanie’s brother, Juergen Merz. The situation deteriorates further after the bride finds Gisele Schlump, the Merz family cook, lying dead in the new-fallen snow outside a WWII bunker now used for food storage. Inside the bunker is Stephanie, with “part of her head blown away.” What first appears to be a murder-suicide proves otherwise, and the Swiss police soon sequester all the members of the wedding party, many of whom had motive for either or both of the killings. Dotsy once again proves a shrewd sleuth in a cozy that readers will be sorry to see end. (June)