The Killer Wedding Is Out Today. A New British Comic Thriller by Sophie Tuke

Welcome to my debut British comic thriller about love, lobsters and attempted murder at a Cotswolds country house wedding.

I have a confession. I have spent the last decade dreaming about writing a book about a wedding where someone tries to murder the groom and I have enjoyed every single moment of it. Which probably says something about me that I'm choosing not to examine too closely.

The Killer Wedding is out today and I couldn't be more thrilled, or more terrified to finally put it into your hands.

So What's It About?

Here's the short version: a witty Whitehall insider narrates the most disastrous society wedding in England, where the bride is a former spy, the best man suspects everyone and someone is trying to kill the groom before the first dance.

Here's the slightly longer version.

Henry Vaughn is the best man at his best friend's wedding. James Ashworth-Pemberton; wealthy, generous, catastrophically trusting, is marrying Anastasia Kovalenko, a brilliant Ukrainian tech entrepreneur he met at a yacht party on the Côte d'Azur. Henry has concerns. Beautiful women at yacht parties are rarely there by accident.

He's right to be suspicious. He's just wrong about what he's suspicious of.

Because Anastasia isn't a gold digger. She's a former intelligence operative who walked away from her past and built a new life. But that past has followed her to a grand Cotswolds country house in the shape of her ex-handler, posing as her long-lost brother, who intends to murder the groom during the wedding weekend.

What follows is a wonderful journey across glamorous locations, finishing in one glorious, catastrophic day complete with sabotaged hot tubs, stolen lobsters, exploding drones, a formidable grandmother with a mysterious past and a bride who came to her own wedding with a knife strapped to her garter.

The groom never realises he's in danger. His life is saved repeatedly by pure comic accident: lobsters, his mother's snobbery about ketchup, an accidental sword parry during the cake-cutting and surprise fireworks that destroy an assassination drone. It is, by any measure, a very eventful reception.

If You Like Knives Out, Country House Mysteries and Laughing on Public Transport

I wrote the book I wanted to read, something that combined the warmth and wit of a PG Wodehouse novel with the propulsive plotting of a spy thriller. Something with real stakes and real danger but that never stops being funny. Something you could describe as Knives Out meets Four Weddings and a Funeral, or the Thursday Murder Club with champagne and a drone strike.

If you love British comic thrillers, country house mysteries and books where the ensemble cast is so vivid you start picking favourites by chapter three, this is for you. If you've ever wanted a narrator so dry and witty you wish he was telling you every story, from your commute to your own wedding; Henry Vaughn is your man.

And if you've ever attended a wedding where something went catastrophically wrong, or wanted to stick a knife in the groom (I'm not judging) and thought someone should write a book about this, well, someone has. Several things go wrong in this one. At least one of them involves a lobster and a hot tub simultaneously.

For Fans Of...

I get asked about comparable books, and I'm always slightly nervous about the answer because it involves comparing yourself to people who are much more talented and successful, which is a bit like introducing yourself at a party by listing everyone you'd like to be friends with. But in the spirit of honesty:

If you enjoy Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club series; the warmth, the eccentric ensemble, the way a mystery can make you laugh and gasp in the same chapter; you'll find a lot to love here.

If you enjoy Anthony Horowitz's Magpie Murders or the Hawthorne series; clever, self-aware mysteries with a narrator who is both participant and observer, you'll recognise what I'm doing with Henry.

If you enjoy Mick Herron's Slow Horses (I love it), bone-dry British spy humour with deeply human characters underneath; Henry has that same energy, just in a morning suit rather than a damp infested office.

And if you simply enjoy a funny wedding thriller where the cast is loveable, the villain is genuinely threatening and the plot keeps you guessing, I wrote this for you.

Meet the Cast

Part of the joy of writing this book was building the ensemble. Every country house mystery needs its cast of suspects, and every great wedding needs its cast of eccentrics. Here are some of the people you'll meet:

Henry Vaughn The narrator. Best man. The one who notices everything. Works in Whitehall in a job so boring people change the subject. Think Nick Carraway with better jokes and worse hangovers.

James Ashworth-Pemberton The groom. The golden retriever of the English aristocracy. Wealthy, trusting, fundamentally decent and incapable of recognising danger when it's sitting across from him at dinner. He drives in ski boots and puts ketchup on everything. You will love him immediately. You will want to protect him.

Anastasia Kovalenko The bride. Former Ukrainian intelligence operative. Current tech entrepreneur. Came to her own wedding armed. She is the most dangerous person in the room and the groom has absolutely no idea.

Granny (Cordelia) Eighty-seven years old. Sees everything. Says nothing. Asks the wedding planner about security perimeters. Imagine if M from James Bond was your grandmother and she was on the champagne.

Freddie The usher. Agent of chaos. Owner of a 1963 E-Type Jaguar he loves more than most people. Fills hot tubs with stolen lobsters as wedding gifts. His heart is enormous. His judgment is non-existent.

There are more: Elizabeth, the formidable mother-in-law; Seb Wilde, the flamboyant wedding planner; a squad of loveable, hapless ushers; but I'll let you discover them yourself.

This Is Book One

I should mention: this is the first in a series. Henry, James, Anastasia, Granny and all your favourite characters will be back. The ending will make you laugh, gasp, and immediately want to know what happens next. (I know what happens next. It involves a baby and chaos.)

If you'd like to be the first to know when Book 2 is coming and get a free bonus piece of content that is not available anywhere else, join the newsletter at www.SophieTuke.com. I promise to be entertaining and never to spam you. I'll write the newsletter in roughly the same voice as this post, which means it will be witty, slightly self-deprecating and occasionally mention lobsters. They wont be that regular, as I am rather busy!

Get Your Copy

The Killer Wedding is available now on Amazon as a Kindle eBook and in paperback. It's also available in Kindle Unlimited, so if you're a KU subscriber, you can read it for free, which considering how much work it was to write feels like a very generous deal!

Buy The Killer Wedding on Amazon → https://www.amazon.co.uk/Killer-Wedding-Hilarious-Cosy-British-ebook/dp/B0GRJ6D48Y

If you read it and enjoy it, I would be enormously grateful if you could leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. For a debut author, early reviews make a genuinely significant difference, they help other readers discover the book and they help me justify the frankly unreasonable amount of time I spent researching whether you can actually drive in ski boots. (You can, but you really shouldn't.)

Thank You

To everyone who has followed along, shared the cover, liked a post, told a friend or simply been curious enough to click, thank you. Writing a book is a solitary business, and launching one is exhilarating and nerve-wracking in roughly equal measure. The fact that you're reading this means the book is out in the world, which is either the best or the most terrifying thing that's happened to me this year (apart from that thing upside down on the biplane, but that is for another day.)

Probably both. In roughly equal measure.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a debut novel to panic about and a lobster to apologise to.

Sophie x

The Killer Wedding by Sophie Tuke is available now on Amazon. A British comic thriller about love, loyalty, secrets and the most eventful society wedding in living memory.

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