The Wedding Plot: A Mercy Carr Mystery

Disaster looms over Vermont’s five-star Lady’s Slipper Inn just days before Mercy Carr’s grandmother Patience’s wedding, in Munier’s enjoyable fourth mystery featuring the former MP and part-time investigator (after 2021’s The Hiding Place). Family tensions flare when free-spirited Aunt Verity arrives in time to upset both the event’s carefully laid plans and her sister, Grace. Groom Claude Renault, meanwhile, has his share of domestic troubles with his two grown sons at each other’s throats over the family’s business empire. Matters go from bad to worse when Mercy and her Malinois shepherd, Elvis, searching for the inn’s missing spa director, Bodhi St. George, discover a stranger’s body on a nearby goat farm. When a wounded St. George turns up at the hospital and later escapes, and a missing girl’s remains and another body are discovered at the farm, Mercy and Elvis—with the aid of her boyfriend, game warden Troy Warner, and his dog, Susie Bear—must track down the killer before the wedding celebration descends into a funeral. Distinctive characters make up for the book’s convoluted second half in which too much goes on. Still, this is fine escapist fare for a hot summer day. (July)