When Clara Fitzgerald, Brighton’s first female private detective, is invited to the wedding of her cousin Andrew Campbell she expects it to be a rather dull weekend. The Campbells, however, are far from dull with proto-feminist Peg fighting with her stepmother and Susan Campbell on the verge of suicide. Matters are not helped by the arrival of the black sheep of the family Uncle Eustace, who is determined to ruffle everyone’s feathers.
But it is on the day of the wedding that events rapidly go wrong. A mysterious woman turns up at the ceremony claiming Andrew is already married to her. Things go from bad to worse when the woman winds up dead and Andrew is prime suspect. Clara finds herself trying to unravel Andrew’s past and the identity of the mystery woman, while contending with a family falling apart. But when more murders occur Clara must face the possibility she has more than one killer on the loose.