Plot Summary:Dianne Price is drowned in the style of the Brides in the Bath murders of almost a century earlier. Blessed Be the Bride is scrawled in lipstick on her bathroom mirror. Her grieving flatmate Jo, who works at a donkey sanctuary run by hard-drinking Liz Tomlin and her antagonistic son Sam, takes the opportunity to escape her voyeuristic landlord Bernard Flack to move in with vet Fran Carter but Fran too is killed, also in a copycat murder from the 1930s, again bridal-related. Pub landlord Matt Rowntree, an ex-cop, is married to Nikki, a former madame whose girls specialized in dressing up fantasies, which arouses Barnaby's suspicions but then an elderly couple are slain, with Just Married daubed on their car and Bridal Suite on the door. Bernard's voyeurism actually saves Jo's life as he calls the police to arrest the murderer, out to claim a fifth victim. The killer turns out to be a deranged and embittered religious maniac, out to slaughter people they believe to have acted immorally, executing them in the manner of murders evoking echoes of the past.
When a young woman is dressed like a bride and drowned in a bath, it triggers a spate of ghoulish wedding-themed murders in Great Worthy. The case takes Barnaby and Jones to a donkey sanctuary, a heritage steam railway, and a pub run by an ex-copper and former brothel madam. Could history be repeating itself?