MAMA GETS HITCHED
by Deborah Sharp
Wedding bells and funeral bells in cow country Florida.
It’s no fun for Mace Bauer, who works at a wildlife park, and her proper sisters Maddie and Marty to prepare for their Mama’s fifth wedding, this one to New York importer Salvatore Provenza. Sure, Sal’s cousin by marriage C’ndee Ciancio is helping with the wedding plans, but she’s loud-mouthed and pushy, and they’d rather be working with the caterer who was stabbed to death less than a week before the wedding. Moreover, Mace’s on-and-off relationship with handsome police detective Carlos Martinez is bound to be strained once more by her habit of investigating murders. The run-up to the nuptials features some eye-popping revelations. C’ndee’s hunky Ivy League–educated nephew Christopher is connected to a mysterious Mafia crime family, and C’ndee has been having affairs with both a violent redneck and the caterer. While Mace is pursued by Christopher, who claims his family’s misdeeds have nothing to do with him, Carlos seems to be spending an awful lot of time with a leather-clad biker chick. Mace’s insatiable curiosity gets her deeper into trouble as she tries to balance her love life with her crime-solving and pull off Mama’s Southern Belle wedding.
Not as amusing as Mama Rides Shotgun (2009, etc.), but bound to give tourists a look at a Florida that is fast being paved out of existence.