Book Review: Mother of the Bride Murder by Leslie Meier

When Lucy Stone’s eldest daughter Elizabeth announces she’s engaged, Lucy is both thrilled and a little wary. The very private Elizabeth has built a successful life for herself in the Parisian hotel industry, and doesn’t have much time for gossiping with her family back in the United States. Thus, none of the Stones have even heard of her intended—Jean-Luc Schoen-Rene—before she tells them about the engagement.

Jean-Luc apparently comes from nobility. His family is also quite important in the hospitality business, owning a chateau that they’ve turned into an upscale countryside resort. Elizabeth is eager to join their family enterprise, but Lucy worries she’ll be dominated by her new mother-in-law, Marie Laure. Elizabeth pooh poohs Lucy’s concerns and invites the entire Stone family to stay at the chateau in the lead up to the wedding, so they can see the place for themselves and get to know the Schoen-Renes a little better. They’ll also save some money on lodging and food in the process.

This sounds like a great idea to Lucy, who is thus shocked by the recalcitrance of the male members of her family. Her husband Bill at least has a good reason: An unfortunate tax error means he owes the government more than expected, which will take a huge chunk out of their discretionary spending. Her only son, Toby, however, has a panoply of bizarre objections to going that ostensibly come from his recent adoption of doomsday prepping due to projected environmental collapse. While Lucy can understand his concerns about saving the planet, she also knows when to put her foot down:

[His reasons were] all true, no doubt, but sounded like a lot of exaggeration as well as a convenient excuse to Lucy, who was beginning to lose patience. “Well, kiddo, I hate to inform you that all those jets are going to be flying whether or not you’re on them. So if I were you, I’d book my tickets while the going is still good. After all, you never know what the future will bring and your father and I aren’t getting any younger. It’s my dearest wish to see all my kids together, celebrating Elizabeth’s big day. It’s not like any of us are jetting around willy-nilly, destroying the ozone layer.”

After finally wrangling her entire family over to France, Lucy is more than willing to suspend her doubts in the face of Elizabeth’s happiness, even if she can’t help wishing that Elizabeth hadn’t broken up with Chris Kennedy, a fellow American in Paris. Despite Elizabeth’s best efforts at escorting her family through a foreign culture though, the Stones often feel awkward and out of place. Things come to a terrible head when Toby and his son Patrick go fishing in the chateau’s moat and accidentally pull up a human corpse.

While the locals, and especially the Schoen-Renes, are happy to chalk up what appears to be a fairly recent death to misadventure, Lucy isn’t so sure. Her eye for investigative journalism plus her track record of solving murders has her convinced that something sinister is afoot. Determined to protect her daughter, she plunges into investigating, only to find herself making a series of near-fatal errors that have her seriously reconsidering her approach to everything:

Lucy watched it all, horrified, trying to think of something she could do to help. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, she realized, overwhelmed with guilt. She could hear her late mother’s voice in her head, announcing angrily that she’d done quite enough already. And she had. It was her stupidity, her blind blundering that had caused all this trouble. It was all her fault. The best thing she could do, the only thing, was to disappear.

Fortunately, our irrepressible Lucy doesn’t stay defeated for long, bouncing back to help solve not only the mystery of the body in the moat but also a series of violent crimes that plague the lead-up to Elizabeth’s wedding. While I was pleased, as always, to see Lucy carry the day, I must admit this was not my favorite novel in her eponymous series. For some reason, the recent books that feature her entire family have these characters all exposing their worst sides, and not even Lucy’s fondness for them can make me do more than feel a grudging tolerance for their collective presence.

It was nice to read of the beautiful French scenery and cuisine, even if some of the Stones were less appreciative of their surroundings than others. This is a light, escapist story that definitely had me craving French food throughout, and is a must-read for series fans and completists alike.