Les livres de Ace, Cathy

With birthday celebrations in the cards, criminologist Cait Morgan and her significant other, retired cop Bud Anderson, travel to Las Vegas. As they are about to finish dinner in the casino owners’ exclusive private dining room, Miss Shirley, a woman acknowledged as Queen of The Strip, is murdered. Security locks down the room. Cait, Bud, a corpse, and ten possible murderers are trapped in the luxurious restaurant for twelve deadly hours.

It's Cait and Bud's wedding weekend and for the first time she feels like a bride - or at least, she's supposed to. But then the rain won't quit, the supposedly romantic Welsh castle feels creepy, and there's a dead body on the stairs. What first appears to have been the untimely, unfortunate, and accidental death of their wedding choirmaster quickly reveals itself to have been a murder.

Henry Twyst, eighteenth Duke of Chellingworth, is convinced his mother is losing her marbles. She claims to have seen a corpse on the dining-room floor, but all she has to prove it is a bloodied bobble hat. Worried enough to retain the women of the WISE Enquiries Agency--one is Welsh, one Irish, one Scottish and one English--Henry wants the strange matter explained away. But the truth of what happened at the Chellingworth Estate, set in the rolling Welsh countryside near the quaint village of Anwen by Wye, is more complex, dangerous, and deadly, than anyone could have foreseen.

In the south of France where hatred simmers in the heat, a man seemingly admired, and certainly feared, drops dead at a dinner party. All of the guests fall under suspicion, including Welsh-Canadian professor Cait Morgan. A criminologist who specializes in profiling victims, Cait sets out to solve the murder - and clear her name. Add to this the disappearance of an ancient Celtic gold collar said to be cursed and you have the ingredients for a Nicoise salad of death, secrets, and lies.

Convinced that the world-famous owner of a family-run vineyard was murdered, criminologist Cait Morgan shares her findings with Bud Anderson, a retired homicide cop. But he believes that the woman took her own life, whatever her grief-stricken sister might say. That is, until death strikes again, in the neat rows of grapevines that clamber up the banks of Lake Okanagan. Uncovering obsessions that might have fuelled murderous thoughts among the victim's wacky neighbours is a start, but as Cait unravels the clues, she realizes that more lives are at stake.

The Anwen Morris Dancers are to play a pivotal role in the imminent nuptials of Henry, eighteenth Duke of Chellingworth. But it looks as though the wedding plans might go awry unless Mavis, Annie, Carol and Christine can help Althea, the Dowager Duchess, by finding a missing Morris man and a set of ancient and valuable artifacts in time for her son's wedding. Anwen-by-Wye might look like an idyllic Welsh village where family values reign and traditions still mean something in a modern world, but what will the WISE women find when they peer behind the respectable net curtains?

Professor Cait Morgan and Bud Anderson have finally said 'I do'. To celebrate, they set sail on a romantic Hawaiian honeymoon cruise and, for nearly two weeks, the mystery solving newlyweds are worry-free. But then a man drops dead in the games room right in front of them and Cait and Bud can't help but lend their expertise. To the others in the games room, the sudden death of Tommy Trussler--the ship's onboard card-game tutor--appears to have been from natural causes. But the professor suspects something much more sinister.

A gig as guest lecturer at the university in Budapest should have been a dream job for a travelling criminologist and food lover. But wherever Cait Morgan goes, murder seems to follow. One of Cait’s new students pleads with her to solve the mystery of her grandmother’s brutal slaying. She agrees, but when she is repeatedly hassled by a weird colleague, and as bizarre details about the student’s family members come to light, Cait is beset by uncertainty.