Trying to plan her wedding is taking a serious toll on Merry Wrath, causing bad case of insomnia in Motto for Murder by Leslie Langtry. One night when she can’t sleep, Merry and her cat Philby, who looks like Hitler, witness what Merry believes is a murder across the street from her. Calling her fiance, Detective Rex Ferguson, who lives across the street from Merry, she is frustrated to discover that he doesn’t take her seriously. Instead, he assumes that Merry has let her insomnia mess with her mind.
Merry begins to wonder if the couple across the street could be spies. Then, she learns about a local woman who has disappeared and soon becomes suspicious of everyone all around her. However, both Rex and Kelly, her best friend, believe that Merry is just delusional from her insomnia. In addition to the insomnia problems, Merry has to deal with her soon-to-be sisters-in-law, the twins Ronni and Randi, who are identical except that Ronni is nice and Randi is not. Since the ladies are taxidermists with strange sensibilities of what to do with animals (one cat is mounted on top of a working Roomba, for example), Ronni excitedly keeps offering bizarre arrangements of animals for the wedding. To add even more flavor to this already delicious book, Merry’s girl scout troop, made up of spies in training, wreak havoc when giving a presentation to other troops on the country of France by waging war on the girls giving their presentation on Spain in an effort to free the Catalans.
All the Merry Wrath books are delightfully silly, and Motto for Murder is no different. I love the ridiculous situations that Merry gets herself into and the creative ways in which she manages to get herself out of them. The plots are a lot of fun, with clever, substantive mysteries too, but the characters serve as the icing on the cake. Each one is so distinct that readers easily picture what they are doing, and each character is highly unique, unlike any other in the book. This book was a true delight to read, and I give it five stars.
