The Windsor Knot

The Windsor Knot by Sharyn McCrumb
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"...Sharyn McCrumb has now written the novel that Elizabeth MacPherson-watcher have been waiting for: Elizabeth is getting married. How and why is typically outrageous, in a mystery of Southern manners and small-town mayhem that is laced with the mordant humor that has become McCrumb's singular trademark.

"Racing to complete her doctoral research in her specialty of forensic anthropology, Elizabeth MacPherson's summer is totally booked -- until her Scottish fiance, Cameron Dawson, calls from across the seas with a once-in-a-lifetime surprise. A local hero and marine biologist, Cameron has been invited to tea with her Majesty the Queen (along with 8,000 close personal subjects of the crown!)

"However, there is one caveat: no friends or fiances may accompany the invited, only spouses. Elated, Elizabeth knows how to solve that small problem -- she and Cameron will simply get married immediately. Royalty enthusiast that she is, planning a large formal wedding in five weeks is the lease she can do for the chance to hobnob with the other Elizabeth.

Meanwhile, in between Elizabeth's fittings and flowers, local widow Clarine Mason receive a strange phone call. Her dear husband Emmet has died, she is told, on a highway in San Diego. How sad. Strange, too, thinks Mrs. Mason, as her errant Emmet died five years before. And she's got an urn filled with ashes to prove it.

"So when the sheriff arrives with an ornate vase, Elizabeth wishes she could thank him for the wedding present. Instead, she puts her expertise to work in a study of Emmet's ashes, which turn out not to be Emmet at all. Just who those ashes once were is what Elizabeth must discover -- if tartan bridesmaids' dresses, scones with tea, and all the accoutrements necessary for the joining of two noble clans don't bury her first."
~~front & back flaps

I cannae fathom out what Cameron stays with that woman, much less marries her. When she's being the level-headed forensic anthropologist she's fine, normal. But she lurches off into giddy schoolgirl mode so often that it's just maddening! Imagine insisting on pushing the wedding ahead a year, and demanding that it be formal as well!

Aside from all the wedding hoopla (was this a mystery or a romance? A mysterious romance? A romantic mystery?), it's a charming little mystery. Emmet J. Mason, dead twice over in an auto accident in California. Very clever plot. And then there's the traveling garden gnome ...

This book feels like a bridging argument to me. The author needed to get Elizabeth over to Scotland, and this was a dandy way to do it. I would have preferred a mystery in Virginia, and then the wedding, but that's only me, being the curmudgeon again.

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