FUDGE AND MARRIAGE

A fudge-making, hotel-owning bride-to-be obsesses about wedding plans but never imagines murder will be involved.

Two weeks before her marriage to Mackinac Island lead police officer Rex Manning, Allie McMurphy’s still reading wedding books and magazines. That’s why she overhears Velma French and Myrtle Bautita’s tiff at the library over some craft books. Leaving the library, she finds Myrtle crying over the body of Velma, who’s been bludgeoned to death with a rock; when Velma’s ex-husband suddenly appears from around the corner of the building, he accuses Myrtle of the crime and kicks the rock into the nearby lake. Other witnesses might be distraught, but Allie, who’s had plenty of experience with murder, is more anxious about dealing with her mother, who’s arrived early with her own plans for the wedding. Allie and her best friend, Jenn, a wedding planner, have planned a large outdoor event with a charmingly simple wedding dress, but Allie’s wealthy mother wants a smaller wedding restricted to close friends and relatives at the island’s fanciest hotel and an extravagant gown for Allie. Furious with her mother and the snobbish relatives who arrived early, Allie tries to placate them by agreeing to hair and makeup appointments and wearing the expensive dresses on offer. Luckily, gathering her book club friends to help find the killer takes her mind off her real problems, and her dog, Mal, helps her uncover several clues. Every day brings a new fight with her mother, and her never having met Rex’s relatives turns out to be a major last-minute problem at the wedding, which almost doesn’t take place.

Plenty of stressful pre-wedding jitters and hidden secrets add up to a tense but often humorous mystery.