Terror in Taffeta
Marla Cooper
Minotaur Books, March 2016
ISBN 978-1-250-07256-6
Hardcover
Readers of Nora Roberts, Sue Grafton, Janet Evanovich, Joanna Fluke, and Sally Goldenbaum mysteries will love Marla Cooper’s new cozy heroine, Kelsey McKenna. Kelsey is a wedding planner at a destination wedding she’s planned in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Everything is going well until the temperamental bridesmaidzilla collapses just as the village priest pronounces the newlyweds husband and wife.
Most of the wedding party flies home the next morning, and Kelsey is set to leave, too. Too bad—the bride’s sister is arrested under suspicion of murder, and Kelsey, along with the bride’s family are kept in town for questioning. Even though Kelsey is no shrinking violet, she’s never had to hunt down dangerous suspects, but that’s what the dominating mother-of-the-bride insists she must do to fulfill her contract as “the wedding planner.” Kelsey capitulates, not only for the sake of her check, but also for the sweet, innocent sister who sits wilting in a Mexican jail cell.
With the help of her convivial, gay wedding photographer, who agrees to stick around to help Kelsey, the witty, spunky planner-turned-sleuth probes the wedding party’s villa accommodations and the charming town of San Miguel for clues. In the process, she perturbs the police, the bride’s mother, and the killer, hooks up with an old flame, and eats a number of yummy-sounding Mexican meals.
An exciting, funny, page-turner, Terror in Taffeta is a delightful addition to the cozy mystery genre.
Reviewed by Joyce Ann Brown, February 2016.
http://www.joyceannbrown.com
Author of cozy mysteries: Catastrophic Connections and Furtive Investigation, the first two Psycho Cat and the Landlady Mysteries.
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