In Scotland in 1936, Dandy Gilver’s sidekick Alec Osborne wakens when his valet, Barrow, puts a tea-tray down on his bedside table. In California in 2020, Lexy Campbell’s sidekick Todd Kruger wakens when his husband, Roger, puts a latte down on his . . .
Alec: another typical Scottish day. Grey, blustery, threatening rain. How I miss the weather of Dorset in the soft south of England, but the number of people one would have to persuade to move down there with one, before life could be contemplated, is growing by the year.
Todd: another typical California day, blue sky from horizon to horizon. I must be the luckiest duck ever born. Even if all my friends and loved ones moved to Timbuktu, I’d still enjoy life here in the sun.
Alec: kidneys at breakfast. Barrow takes such good care of me. And the Darjeeling was perfection.
Todd: spinach, apple, almond, flax and pumpkin-seed smoothie. Deelish. Not. But if I drink it looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, reminding myself what it’s for, I can usually get it down without gagging. Not bad for nearly forty, Toddles!
Alec: lots of one’s friends now shave themselves with one of these new-fangled “safety razors” and it begins to feel sybaritic to ask Barrow to oblige day after day. It’s not the task; it’s the thought of looking at one’s face in the mirror every morning. I’d imagine a swift march to the brandy decanter afterwards. When did I turn into my own father? Wasn’t it last week I was a young blood? I’m almost forty.
Todd: A Trinity spree in store today. My favorite! Lexy, Kathi and I are on the trail of a deadbeat boyfriend who moved out while the sweetest little gal in the world was on nightshift in a care home and took her elliptical with him. We’ve tracked him to a town up in the gold hills, which just happens to have a fabuloso cantina with home-made wheat tortilla chips to die for! What a stroke of luck for us. Dude owns a Harley and could have been anywhere.
Alec: I shall probably shuffle over to Gilverton and see what Dan’s got on the docket. If our feelers in re. a deserting husband who availed himself of his wife’s family pearls as he departed have borne fruit overnight, then there might be a jaunt in prospect. He can’t have gone far. The partridge season just opened and he’s an excellent shot, really quite renowned, in high demand at house parties throughout the land. He wouldn’t miss the partridge just to escape a marriage. Few of us would, in a good year.
Todd: Kathi and Lexy are the best pals a boy could hope for. They buttoned their lips all the way up into the hills so I could pretend to my mom – on speakerphone – that I wasn’t on another “wild goose chase” pretending that this “hare-brained enterprise” was a real job. She was so proud of medical school; the detective agency is killing her.
Alec: rather tiresome to have to run the gauntlet of Hugh every day to get to Dandy. He never can accept that I like Gilver and Osborne Investigations; that I’m happy being an under-detective to his wife; that I thank the Lord for my estate manager every day I don’t have to tramp my own acreage and do not desire to tramp Hugh’s. Golly, it’s as though one’s mother were still alive and had joined forces with Nanny. My life’s not my own. I might as well be married. Nearly.
Todd: Cheese and rice, ellipticals are big when you try to get one in a Jeep with three people! And a darling life-size chainsaw sculpture of Patrick Stewart I saw at a roadside stand and couldn’t resist, for Roger’s birthday. The problem was where to keep it so he wouldn’t see it. With hindsight, propped in the corner of the back office covered in a tarp wasn’t the answer. I thought I was going to have to give Noleen CPR when she went back and saw it standing there. That was some pret-ty PG13 language to let out in guests’ hearing.
Alec: Success! Pearls locked in the glove box, Dandy and I drove home from Balmoral giddy with triumph and with the after-effects of being so close to such grandeur. Would you credit it? One would rather think that a chap with an invitation from His Majesty to shoot on the royal estate would do that first and leave his wife later. Not go right there with stolen jewels in his shaving case and tough it out. Lord knows what the footman thought when he unpacked and found a triple-strand of pearls amongst a bachelor’s things. Trained not to think, I suppose. Thank God.
Todd: Margaritas, tacos, and bed. What a fantastic day!
Alec: Poached partridge of impeccable royal pedigree, brandy and soda, and my blameless pallet. Not a bad day as these things go.
The Turning Tide is the 14th book in the “Dandy Gilver” historical mystery series, released November 24, 2020.
It’s a breezy Scottish summer of 1936 and aristocratic sleuth Dandy Silver, along with trusted colleague Alec Osborne, has been called to solve the strange case of the Cramond Ferrywoman, on the Firth of the Forth.
From their cheerless digs in a local stately home, Dandy and Alec track Vesper Kemp, the ferrywoman, to a tiny tidal island. She seems to have lost her mind, roaming the beaches in rags, ranting about snakes and mercury. What is even more troubling, is that Vesper claims she murdered Peter Haslett, a young man who fell into the river, trying to row past ones of its four water mills, and drowned.
A group of worried Cramond residents–the minister, the innkeeper, and the lady of the big house–are determined that Vesper is innocent. But with four local millers themselves remaining oddly tight-lipped and with all the suspicious strangers who lurk about the village, Dandy and Alec have their work cut out for them. And the closer they get to the answers they seek, the stronger the sense that great danger lies beneath the surface of these murky waters.
Scot on the Rocks is the third book in the “Last Ditch” cozy mystery series, kindle edition released August 2020.
A community is devastated when the bronze statue of local legend Mama Cuento is stolen on Valentine’s Day. When Lexy Campbell arrives on the scene, a big bronze toe is found along with a ransom note – “Listen to our demands or you will never see her again. There are nine more where this came from”.
Then, Lexy’s ex-husband Bran turns up begging for help to find his wife, Brandee, who has disappeared. Lexy agrees to pitch in, but when she shows up at Bran’s house he has just discovered one of Brandee’s false nails and another ransom note with the same grisly message.
Are the two cases linked or is a copycat on the loose? Who would want to kidnap a bronze statue or, come to that, Brandee? And can Lexy put aside her hatred for Bran long enough to find out?
About the author 
Catriona McPherson was born in Scotland and lived there until immigrating to the US in 2010. She writes the multi-award-winning Dandy Gilver series, set in the old country in the 1930s, as well as a strand of multi-award-winning psychological thrillers. Very different awards. After eight years in the new country, she kicked off the humorous Last Ditch Motel series, which takes a wry look at California life. These are not multi-award-winning, but the first two won the same award in consecutive years, which still isn’t too shabby.
Catriona belongs to MWA, CWA, SoA and PEN. She is a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime.
(2020 being the way it is, one book is late and one book is early and so somehow The Turning Tide launched in the US on the 24th of November and Scot On The Rocks appeared on the 30th (UK). None of us will ever forget this year, will we?)
All comments are welcomed.
Thank you, Dru, for having all three of us – Alec, Todd, and me – over to the Musing today. Cxx
you are most welcomed.