The Bride Wore Blackmail
(2026)(The second book in the Dead Letter House Cozy Mystery series)
A novel by Diana Beckett
At Blackbird Quay’s grandest wedding of the year, the flowers are flawless, the guests are glittering, and the bride is hiding letters that should never have reached her hands.
Elsie Harrow only meant to deliver the latest anonymous note through Dead Letter House and keep her best friend’s catering job running smoothly. Instead, the evening turns deadly when luxury wedding planner Celia Pritchard is found murdered in a locked flower room before the vows can begin.
Now the cliffside hotel is full of liars with polished smiles and very public reasons to keep the truth buried. The bride’s powerful family is desperate to avoid scandal. The groom has doubts he is trying not to show. An angry ex is lingering too close to the ceremony. And someone with legal authority seems far too interested in which papers survive the night.
As Elsie follows a trail of blackmail letters, altered records, and family secrets dressed up as respectability, she discovers this wedding is about far more than love. If the wrong name is written on the right document, fortunes change hands, histories disappear, and murder becomes just another way of keeping the paperwork tidy.
But when Dead Letter House is dragged into the scandal and the killer starts hunting the same missing file Elsie needs, she has to expose the truth before another life is rewritten for good.
Perfect for fans of charming seaside settings, clever amateur sleuths, layered clues, slow-burn tension, and cozy mysteries packed with secrets, scandal, and a satisfying fair-play reveal.
Genre: Mystery
Elsie Harrow only meant to deliver the latest anonymous note through Dead Letter House and keep her best friend’s catering job running smoothly. Instead, the evening turns deadly when luxury wedding planner Celia Pritchard is found murdered in a locked flower room before the vows can begin.
Now the cliffside hotel is full of liars with polished smiles and very public reasons to keep the truth buried. The bride’s powerful family is desperate to avoid scandal. The groom has doubts he is trying not to show. An angry ex is lingering too close to the ceremony. And someone with legal authority seems far too interested in which papers survive the night.
As Elsie follows a trail of blackmail letters, altered records, and family secrets dressed up as respectability, she discovers this wedding is about far more than love. If the wrong name is written on the right document, fortunes change hands, histories disappear, and murder becomes just another way of keeping the paperwork tidy.
But when Dead Letter House is dragged into the scandal and the killer starts hunting the same missing file Elsie needs, she has to expose the truth before another life is rewritten for good.
Perfect for fans of charming seaside settings, clever amateur sleuths, layered clues, slow-burn tension, and cozy mysteries packed with secrets, scandal, and a satisfying fair-play reveal.
Genre: Mystery
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