Mother of the bride murder

Meier's ho-hum latest dip (after 2022's Easter Bonnet Murder) into the life of Lucy Stone, an intrepid reporter in Tinker's Cove, Maine, focuses on her oldest daughter, Elizabeth, who has been working as a concierge at a swanky hotel in Paris. The action begins when Elizabeth informs her mother of her upcoming marriage to Frenchman Jean-Luc Schoen-Rene. The ceremony is to be held at his family's château, and the Schoen-Renes have offered to put Elizabeth's family up during their stay. Amid the festivities, a woman's body is found in the château's moat, but the gendarmes treat her death with a shrug. This doesn't satisfy Lucy, who can't help investigating while maneuvering around family squabbles and culture clashes. Fans who started with Meier's first Lucy Stone novel in 1991 may be interested to see how the gumshoe's children and grandchildren are turning out, but the plotting in this outing is exceedingly limp. Readers looking for a worthy mystery to solve--or even a cozy one--would be better served elsewhere. Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (May)

Maine reporter Lucy Stone sees her daughter's dream wedding turn into a nightmare. As the only local newspaper in Tinker's Cove, the Courier gets its fair share of wedding announcements. Still, Lucy can't help feeling nettled when Janice Oberman sails into the paper's office, duck boots and all, to crow about her third daughter, Chelsea, becoming engaged less than a month after Morgan, her second. Although her son, Toby, married his high school sweetheart ages ago, Lucy's three intelligent, accomplished daughters are still unwed. Fortunately, Elizabeth, the oldest of them, calls within minutes from Paris, where she works in an upscale hotel, to announce her engagement. Her prospective groom, Jean-Luc Schoen-Rene, is the son of a count (take that, Janice!), and the wedding will take place at his parents' 80-plus-room château in the French countryside. Wrangling everyone, including Toby's Seattle-based family, overseas is a major undertaking, but once there, Lucy is increasingly uneasy about the upcoming nuptials. Why, she wonders, are Elizabeth and Jean-Luc allocated just two dark, tiny rooms in the majestic family home? Why does Jean-Luc take Elizabeth and her sisters to a local pub only to spend the evening playing ball with his friends? Readers never find out, because the wedding ceremony is prefaced by a corpse and disrupted by a shooting, leaving Lucy to pick up the pieces. Fortunately, American ingenuity saves the feckless foreigners from a self-induced disaster, and Lucy's able to return to Tinker's Cove with her head held high. Meier's xenophobia manages to flourish even on its targets' home turf. Vive l'Amerique! Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.