Everyone loves a wedding don’t they? That’s the thought that ran through my mind when trying to decide how best my heroine, Alexi Ellis, could bring much needed attention and trade to Hopgood Hall, the luxury boutique hotel in which she was a minority shareholder. A number of murders indirectly connected to the hotel had caused its reputation to suffer but a celebrity wedding would be just the thing to put it firmly back on the map.
They say weddings are one of the most stressful occasions known to man, right up there with family holidays, moving house and Christmas. But with this one being micro-managed by the bride from hell and her demanding mother, and with the event being recorded for posterity by TV cameras, everyone involved was constantly under the spotlight so what could possibly go wrong?
Well, given that the series revolves around murder, I guess the answer is pretty obvious and one that allows an author’s imagination a lot of scope. So, having decided who was to meet a grizzly end, all in the name of fictional entertainment you understand, I was then able to give my imagination free rein.
Who would want to scupper the wedding in quite such a dramatic way? Did the bride or groom have a vengeful ex determined to scupper the nuptials? Or worse, did someone bear a grudge against Alexi and want to see the hotel fail? Jack Maddox, Alexi’s partner, had put away more than one vicious criminal who knew how to bear a grudge during his years as a Met police detective, and then as a private investigator. The groom’s father was fiercely against the marriage. The bride’s estranged father had his own agenda. At least one of the bridesmaids didn’t want the wedding to go ahead and the best man was once engaged to the bride.
Phew! See what I mean about weddings being stressful.
Follow the twists and turns in A Marriage to Murder For and, with the help of Cosmo, the anti-social feral cat who’s developed a gift for stealing the show, see if you can figure out who did it, and why.
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