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The Last Toast
(2027)(The eighth book in the Riley Marsh K-9 Search & Rescue Mystery series)
A novel by Mara Perry
An August wedding at the lodge.
A hundred and forty guests.
The officiant doesn't make it to the toasts.
Everyone at the reception has an alibi. That's the problem.
The Grayling Lodge does four weddings a summer and this one is the biggest: a hometown bride, a groom from Missoula, and half the county in the receiving line. Riley Marsh is there in a dress, off duty, with Huck at her feet under the table and a puppy at home who has already eaten one boot.
The officiant is found on the terrace between the ceremony and the dinner, in the eleven minutes when a hundred and forty people were all watching the same thing.
The county calls it a cardiac event. The family flies him home. The lodge books the next wedding.
Riley Marsh disagrees.
Twenty-two months back in Copper Falls, seven cases behind her, Riley has learned the shape of a room that has agreed on a story. Eleven minutes is not an alibi when everyone was looking the same direction. And a man who marries strangers for a living learns things about them.
Meanwhile, what her brother wrote in code twelve years ago finally has a name attached to it.
It is a name she has known her whole life. A name on the plaque at the SAR barn. A name that has been shaking her hand in public since the day she came home.
THE LAST TOAST is the eighth book in the Riley Marsh K-9 Search & Rescue Mysteries, a cozy-adjacent K-9 procedural set in the Montana high country. For fans of Sophie Lyon's K-9 Search & Rescue Mysteries, Margaret Mizushima's Timber Creek novels, and Jenn McKinlay.
What readers will find:
A hundred and forty guests.
The officiant doesn't make it to the toasts.
Everyone at the reception has an alibi. That's the problem.
The Grayling Lodge does four weddings a summer and this one is the biggest: a hometown bride, a groom from Missoula, and half the county in the receiving line. Riley Marsh is there in a dress, off duty, with Huck at her feet under the table and a puppy at home who has already eaten one boot.
The officiant is found on the terrace between the ceremony and the dinner, in the eleven minutes when a hundred and forty people were all watching the same thing.
The county calls it a cardiac event. The family flies him home. The lodge books the next wedding.
Riley Marsh disagrees.
Twenty-two months back in Copper Falls, seven cases behind her, Riley has learned the shape of a room that has agreed on a story. Eleven minutes is not an alibi when everyone was looking the same direction. And a man who marries strangers for a living learns things about them.
Meanwhile, what her brother wrote in code twelve years ago finally has a name attached to it.
It is a name she has known her whole life. A name on the plaque at the SAR barn. A name that has been shaking her hand in public since the day she came home.
THE LAST TOAST is the eighth book in the Riley Marsh K-9 Search & Rescue Mysteries, a cozy-adjacent K-9 procedural set in the Montana high country. For fans of Sophie Lyon's K-9 Search & Rescue Mysteries, Margaret Mizushima's Timber Creek novels, and Jenn McKinlay.
What readers will find:
- A complete standalone mystery: closed circle, one hundred and forty suspects, eleven minutes
Summer at full tourist season, and a working dog off duty who goes back on it in a dress-shop parking lot
A proposal that goes wrong in the best possible way
A new puppy, Juniper, and an old dog teaching her the job
No graphic on-page violence — the crime is off-page; the aftermath is the story
The dog always comes home.
If you love a country-house mystery moved to a Montana lodge, one-click THE LAST TOAST now and follow the dog.
Genre: Cozy Mystery