The Kidnapped Bride

This is a slice of life from the Farley Family Saga. Young Marlie is delighted to check in to the country hotel to start preparations for her wedding day. She is less than pleased when two masked men seize her fiancee and carry him away. Distraught, she tries to enlist the help of her family, gathered for the ceremony, to aid her in her quest. The police arrive and she is happy to welcome their assistance, but they have bad news - her father-in-law has been arrested for alleged crimes he committed in Eastern Europe. Then a representative of the Foreign Office arrives, to say that Marlie's bridegroom needs to be found - so that he too can be deported from the country! A helicopter arrives, seemingly to transport the miscreants, but it actually is bringing a briefcase, a case full of money, provided by the British government to smooth over negotiations with the kidnappers. They are, it seems, actually rather well-known terrorists. In the normal course of events, Marlie might have expected them to be the ones who would be arrested, but this is anything but a normal day: in the topsy turvey world of international relations, Marlie and her family are cast in the role of the bad guys, and the European thugs look like the ones who will come out on top, paid off and given an official escort home. This is no ordinary romance. Mike Scantlebury, the author, has come up with a world of intrigue, double dealing and back stabbing. Still, for those who like their stories to have a happy ending, there is no doubt that will be there. But how? How can love prevail in such a melee, where men with guns are holding the bride's family hostage and the supposed bridegroom is tied up and covered in bruises? How can a girl in a wedding dress take on desperate criminals, with nothing more than native cunning and proven ability in the swimming pool and in the field of gymnastics? Luckily, this is no ordinary family. The Farleys are an old-fashioned bunch, who are not afraid to crack a few heads and storm some barricades. There has never been a character like Uncle Tony, skilled with his fists, but hampered by a heart of gold. And Marlie's mother, a crack shot with a shotgun - she's even won awards with it! And Marlie's sister, loyal, loving, but bickering to the end, while she defends young Marlie, even to the death. They are a formidable combination. Any terrorist, gun runner, drug dealer or blackmailer, who thought they would have an easy time of it, at an anonymous hotel in the English countryside, soon finds to their cost, that the combined skill and experience of the Farley Family is more than enough to stymie all their well-laid plans and confound their evil intentions. After all, Marlie started the day as a young lady who was planning to get married that afternoon. She isn't going to let a little mayhem get in the way of her completing her plans, even if that means she has to rescue the Kidnapped Bridegroom first!