Welcome to my stop on the Great Escapes Virtual Book Tour for Mystery at an Irish Wedding: Half Moon Bay Mysteries by L.C. Winters. Stop by each blog on the tour for interviews, guest posts, spotlights, reviews and more!

Mystery at an Irish Wedding: Half Moon Bay Mysteries

by L.C. Winters

Mystery at an Irish Wedding: Half Moon Bay Mysteries
Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Setting – Ireland
Independently Published (January 13, 2025)
Print length ‏ : ‎ 378 pages

“Wedding dresses, ex-fiancés, and a whole lot of murder—just another day in Half Moon Bay”

Therapist Clementine Moriarty thought her return to the whimsical seaside town of Half Moon Bay, nestled in cozy Donegal – would be a chance to reconnect with her roots, spend time at her parents’ charming little seaside art gallery and heal from heartbreak. But her homecoming is anything but peaceful when she stumbles upon an unwelcome surprise—her ex-fiancé, Greg, is getting married to her best friend, Charlotte, on the very beach where Clementine was supposed to say “I do.”

Through a series of unexpected twists and turns, what starts as a personal nightmare soon spirals into an intriguing mystery. An anonymous email had lured Clementine back home, but who sent it and why? As the wedding unfolds, tensions simmer, secrets surface, and Half Moon Bay’s picturesque façade begins to crack. When someone turns up dead with a series of baffling clues and puzzles, Clementine finds herself the role of unlikely detective as she becomes the prime suspect.

With the help of a heartwarming, blue-haired artist and her sharp intuition, Clementine must navigate a maze of jealous exes, local gossip, and buried betrayals to uncover the truth amid the charming and Whimsical backdrop of Donegal. But in a village where everyone has something to hide, will this quirky crime-solving team be able to unmask the killer before it’s too late?

Perfect for fans of small-town mysteries, vibrant characters, clever clues, and a touch of romance, Murder at an Irish Wedding will keep you guessing until the final page.

Author Guest Post

Mystery at an Irish Wedding in one paragraph

Mystery at an Irish Wedding is a cozy mystery novel, the first in the Half Moon Bay series. It is set in a small, seaside village in Ireland and introduces our two sleuths Clementine and Mason as they try to solve a murder and prevent Clem from going to prison for a crime she didn’t commit. It’s an action packed, fast paced novel filled with clues, puzzles and drama!

What the book is about in a bit more detail

The story follows Clementine (known as Clem) as she teams up with eccentric artist Mason to try to clear her name when she is framed for murder. 

The whole tale begins with an email which Clem receives as she is travelling around the world. The world trip was itself an impulsive move on her part. After a bad breakup with her fiance a year before their wedding, she took off with her hard earned savings and spent it all exploring the planet in order to put some distance between herself and the heartache. 

The email she receives is from her mother and she is asked to return to her home village of Half Moon Bay in Donegal, Ireland. The occasion? They are having a surprise early birthday party for her father. The other request – she must pick up a bottle of a particular brand of champagne and bring it to the party. 

Clem arrives back in Half Moon Bay still carrying a torch for her ex-fiance Greg with some hope that they can rekindle that flame and make sparks fly. When she runs into Greg on her journey from the bus stop to her parents gallery, things are looking up.

However all is not what it seems. The party preparations on the beach next to the gallery are not for her father’s birthday at all. They are for a wedding and not just any wedding. Greg is marrying her so-called best friend Charlotte on the very beach where she and Greg were going to tie the knot. 

When Clem interrupts the ceremony and becomes ‘the wedding objector’ she fuels the local gossip mill but things are about to go from bad to worse. 

When she finds out that the email supposedly sent by her mother was actually a fake she wonders who could have lured her back to Half Moon Bay on this particular day and for what purpose? 

Mason, the handsome, quirky artist is puzzled by this turn of events and when one of the wedding party is murdered and Clem becomes the lead suspect she must work with Mason to clear her name and solve the crime. A clever killer has framed her and time is against her. 

The setting 

The Half Moon Bay mystery series is set in a fictional village in Ireland. The village is on the coast and the beach, the sea and the rugged, hilly coastline play an integral part in the stories.

The village is like a character in itself. 

Half Moon Bay is a cheerful place full of brightly painted shops and houses laid out in a semi circle around the bay with more remote, rural cottages and small farms dotted around the wider countryside. There are a few castles too including the strange, gothic edifice known as Fang Castle that features on one of our later novels. 

This world of Irish villages, the wild sea with its endless stretches of sandy beaches, lush woodland and hilly ground is based on Donegal where Laura (one half of L.C. Winters writing duo) is from. Both of us, Colin and Laura, are Irish and we wanted to set our stories in our home country and showcase all that the emerald isle has in terms of beauty, quirkiness, legends and atmosphere. 

What makes our stories ‘cozy’

Our novels focus less on the gritty side of murder or the procedural elements of police work and more on the characters, the comedy and the clues. 

Our characters are quirky and a lot of fun to write. Each one of them comes to the page with their own unique style and charm. 

Making our readers laugh is also important to us and we like to bring humour into our character dialogues. We love putting our main characters in somewhat ridiculous situations and finding out how they deal with that. 

Clementine Moriarty – her story 

Clementine is from Half Moon Bay originally. Her parents own the seashell Gallery perched right above the beach. She was engaged to Greg and they were together for over a decade. They split up because they were fighting all the time. Greg was critical, cruel and had a temper. Clem was forgetful, unpunctual and always losing things which made Greg feel that she didn’t care. Clem still had feelings for him when she returned to Half Moon Bay and found that he was marrying her best friend behind her back. But over time she realises that the relationship she had with Greg was toxic and full of pain. There were highs and lows and perhaps in the end the lows greatly outnumbered the high points. 

She studied Psychology in Dublin, Ireland and completed a degree only to run out of money for a postgraduate degree. Instead she got a job as a tour guide, creating her own walking tours using her flair for drama, history and her knowledge of psychology to enhance her tours. After a number of years working as a tour guide she saved up enough money to do a postgrad degree in psychotherapy (taking on some debt in the process) and she was three months from the end of this when the break up with Greg happened. She postponed the degree and went travelling, using up all her savings.

When he arrived back shocked by the unexpected wedding she reacted badly, interrupting the beach ceremony and causing a lot of gossip. And when a murder happened she was framed and had to figure out the truth. 

Arriving back home was a let down in many ways. She had previously lived in a house with Greg (which he owned and she paid him rent) and now she was forced to move back into her childhood bedroom in her parent’s apartment above the gallery. 

The upside of being back in Half Moon Bay was meeting Mason, an artist from Dublin, and seeing the place through his eyes showed her the wonder in her own backyard. She felt close to Mason in a way she had not experienced before. She knew that her old life was over but something new was beginning. 

Mason Hughes – his story 

Mason Hughes is from Dublin. He’s a conceptual artist with bright blue hair, handsome, profoundly intelligent and highly logical. His life is laced with tragedy as he lost his parents unexpectedly and this catastrophic event threw him into turmoil and changed him forever.

Originally studying art in a prestigious art college in Dublin, Mason dropped out to become a Guard (Irish police officer) rising quickly to the rank of detective with the guidance of his mentor Sheridan Locke. Mason’s father had been a detective and he certainly lived up to the family name as he became known as the ‘brilliant but eccentric’ detective, often working alone and solving impossible crimes. 

After a terrible incident meant he lost his job Mason had taken the opportunity to return to the world of art, moving to Half Moon Bay. Just when he thought that his days as a detective were over, he is thrown into a murder investigation. Initially working alone with unwanted help from Clem, he must accept her and work as part of a team to solve the murder and stop her from being blamed for the crime. 

About L. C. Winters

L.C. Winters is the pen name for Laura Cavanagh & Colin Vaughan. We are from Ireland, and we aim to bring our culture, cozy Irish atmosphere, legends and history into our stories. We write cozy mystery romance novels. Our focus is on creating a set of clever clues with twists and turns to keep you guessing until the very end. Our first series is called ‘Half Moon Bay Mysteries and it is set in a small, seaside village in Ireland. Our stories promote a romanticised view of small-town life with a host of eccentric, lovable characters.

As avid mystery fans (we love the classics like Agatha Christie as well as modern cozy authors like Richard Osman), we love deciphering clues and trying to beat the detective to figure out who commited the crime. So we decided to create mysteries with a complex set of interrelated clues which are delivered in an easy to follow story. We hope that the ending of each of our mysteries is both a surprise and, at the same time, feels inevitable and ‘right’.

Laura has a degree in Psychology and this is reflected in our protagonist Clementine who uses her Psychology know-how to figure out the motives, secrets and inconsistencies in each suspect.

With our cozy fiction, we aim to create heartwarming stories with lovable, quirky characters in a nice, soothing environment. Wherever you are when you are reading our stories, we hope to whisk you away to beautiful, picturesque Ireland to the seaside county of Donegal!

Author Links

 Webpage – lcwinters.com

 Blog  – https://lcwinters.com/blog-home/

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/LCWinters/

 Twitter/X – https://x.com/L_C_Winters

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/glitterbug_fiction/

BlueSky – https://bsky.app/profile/lc-winters.bsky.social

GoodReads – https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/53784435.L_C_Winters

Purchase Link – Amazon

Series Purchase Link – Amazon

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Murder at an Irish Wedding TOUR PARTICIPANTS

June 12 – Books, Ramblings, and Tea – SPOTLIGHT

June 12 – Jody’s Bookish Haven – SPOTLIGHT

June 13 – Christy’s Cozy Corners – AUTHOR GUEST POST

June 14 – Sapphyria’s Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT

June 15 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT

June 15 – Boys’ Mom Reads! – REVIEW

June 16 – Maureen’s Musings – SPOTLIGHT

June 17 – Jane Reads – CHARACTER GUEST POST

June 18 – Read Your Writes Book Reviews – CHARACTER INTERVIEW

June 19 – Socrates Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT

June 19 – Reading Is My SuperPower – REVIEW

June 20 – Book Club Librarian – REVIEW

June 20 – Cozy Up WIth Kathy – REVIEW, AUTHOR INTERVIEW

June 21 – Baroness Book Trove – SPOTLIGHT

June 21 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – AUTHOR GUEST POST

June 22 – Frugal Freelancer – AUTHOR GUEST POST

June 23 – Novels Alive – REVIEW

June 24 – Ruff Drafts – SPOTLIGHT

June 25 – Sarah Can’t Stop Reading Books – REVIEW

June 25 – Ascroft, eh? – CHARACTER GUEST POST

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