Cait Morgan first appeared in The Corpse with the Silver Tongue and one of the best ways to learn about a person is by asking questions, so let’s get to know Cait.
What is your full name?
Caitlin Morgan (I much prefer, and always use, Cait). Mum and Dad named me after the poet Dylan Thomas’s wife; he was born and raised in Swansea, Wales, like me (I emigrated to Canada in my thirties), and they both adored his poetry, as do I.
How old are you?
I recently turned 50. But let’s not dwell on that, okay?
What is your profession?
I’m a professor of criminal psychology at the University of Vancouver, though I’ve taken a few months off to allow for recuperation from an incident which happened in Budapest recently.
Do you have a significant other?
Indeed, I do – my wonderful husband.
What is their name and profession?
Bud Anderson is his name, and he retired a few years ago, following the death of his first wife, Jan. At the time of his retirement he had a command role with an international task force tackling gangs, drugs and associated crimes around the world, though he was largely based here in British Columbia, Canada. Prior to that he headed up the regional integrated homicide investigation team, following a life-long career as a law enforcement officer first in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, then with the Vancouver Police Department.
Do you have any children?
No. Not everything is for everyone.
Do you have any siblings?
My younger sister Siân lives in Perth, Western Australia, with her husband and children, so I don’t see her very often. She visited Wales when Bud and I had our “destination wedding” there, which was a surprisingly traumatic time. I hope to be able to visit her in Australia one day.
Are your parents nearby?
In a manner of speaking, I suppose they are, because their ashes are sitting on my mantlepiece; I don’t know what else to do with them. They both died in a dreadful car accident some years ago. I’ll never get over feeling responsible for their deaths, because they were doing something for me at the time it happened. I miss them both terribly.
Who is your best friend?
My husband is my best friend – and I mean that literally. I’m not the sort of person who makes friends, generally speaking, so it might even be accurate to say he’s my only friend.
Do you have any pets?
Bud already had Marty when we got together, but he’s “ours” now. As black Labs go, he’s not much more overweight than most I see on our local walks, I suppose, and he has that adorable waggly ear of his, and a winning smile. The waggly ear? He was injured trying to defend Bud’s late wife. . .he’s a brave boy, who deserves every treat he gets.
What town do you live in?
We live just outside Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Would you say you live in a small town or a big city?
The local community is pretty spread out – you see, we’re half-way up a little mountain, where everyone has to live on at least five acres due to the fact we all have septic systems and wells for our water. Pretty much everyone who lives here has made the choice to make their home somewhere that means we aren’t all on top of each other. There’s a Post Office and a feedstore, plus a community centre – beautifully located overlooking a lake – but you couldn’t really call us a very “social” community.
Type of dwelling and do you own or rent?
Bud used to live in a condo with his late wife, and I had a little house located close to the university where I teach, both of which we’ve now sold. This house? This house is our house, our home together. We hunted for it together, we chose it together, and we bought it together. It’s quite big for just the two of us, I suppose, but Marty manages to run around the place and make it feel fuller. That said, Bud and I both enjoy our own space, and I really need an office all to myself because I bring home so much work – like papers to grade, and so forth.
What is your favorite spot in your home?
In the winter I like snuggling on the sofa with Marty, beside the wood burning stove we have in the family room. In the summer, I adore sitting out on the deck at the back of the house, enjoying our peaceful, rural surroundings.
Favorite meal and dessert?
Oh, this is almost impossible to answer. I’ll be honest, I love my food! No one who ever met me could imagine I’m not a bit of a foodie – my waistline tells you that. So, a favourite meal? That would depend on the circumstances. You see, Bud and I travel a fair bit, and I always make sure to try the local dishes wherever we are – you can learn a great deal about a culture through its food, and I throw myself in at the deep end. Each part of the world I’ve been to has allowed me to develop a new “favourite”, but – since Bud and I are just back from Jamaica – the things I’m missing most at the moment are bammy and goat curry. I don’t have a very sweet tooth, but will admit I’m yearning for mangoes that taste as good as they did back in Jamaica – and trust me when I tell you it’s odd for me to “miss” something as healthy as fruit!
Do you have any hobbies?
I never think of reading as a “hobby”, because I see it as a part of what I need to live, like eating and breathing. But if you think of it as such, then that would be my hobby. I read – A LOT! – and I very much enjoy following trails I find myself taking on the world wide web. Books are wonderful, but I must admit I find being side-tracked a delight.
What is your favorite vacation spot?
Another tough one. Why? Well, frankly, because whenever I visit anywhere at all I seem to trip over another corpse! Maybe I should stay at home more – that might solve it!
What music do you listen to?
I only really listen to music while I’m driving – I find it distracting when I’m doing anything else, and if I have my nose in a book it’s a big no-no. When I do listen, then I gravitate toward music of the 1950s to the 1970s. From Sinatra to Led Zeppelin. . .that about sums it up.
Do you have a favorite book?
Another impossible question! No, I don’t have one favourite book, but on Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4 – a programme to which I am addicted – they allow you to have a copy of the Bible and the complete works of William Shakespeare with you on your desert island, then you can add another book. . .so I’m playing by those rules, and assuming I have them (and if I don’t, then I’ll have the complete works of Shakespeare, please). But. . .well, this is where I have to tell you a secret – which I trust you won’t share. I have an eidetic memory. Some people call it a photographic memory, but that’s not a term I use, because my memory doesn’t work like a camera; I can recall everything encoded by all my senses, beyond merely sight. However, it does mean I can “re-read” anything I’ve already read whenever I want to, which makes choosing a favourite a difficult choice. That said, a book that made a huge impact on me when I first read it was The Lord of the Rings, because it’s so richly written.
What is your idea of a really fun time?
Being alone with Bud (and Marty, if possible) with champagne (or a G&T), savoury nibbles, good weather, and time to put my feet up.
If you were to write a memoir, what would you call it?
“Well, that didn’t go quite as planned, did it?!”
Amateur or professional sleuth and whom do you work with?
I’m a professor of criminal psychology, with a specialization in profiling victims. It’s what I do for a living, but it’s also what I seem to end up doing in my so-called “spare time” too – so I suppose you’d call me a not-so-amateur sleuth. When Bud was still working with the Vancouver Police Department, he hired me as a sometime-consultant to work with his team. Now that we’re a team for life, we still work together if we’re faced with a corpse and a murder to solve.
In a few sentences, what is a typical day in your life like?
There’s no such thing, really, especially at the moment. When I was still teaching at university, I’d head off to deliver lectures and tutorials, bring home papers to grade, and steel myself for our weekly and monthly faculty meetings. But I haven’t been teaching for some months now, and I find my days seem to flow into each other. The month we recently spent in Jamaica was an extension of that sort of no-schedule life. . .though the final week turned out to be more full of surprises than I’d have liked, all starting with the discovery of the body of the man who owned the private estate where we were staying. And he was found in a locked room at the top of a tower overlooking the Caribbean, which seemed impossible!
The Corpse With The Crystal Skull is the ninth book in the “Cait Morgan” traditional mystery series, coming June 29, 2020.
Welsh Canadian globetrotting sleuth, and professor of criminal psychology, Cait Morgan, is supposed to be “celebrating” her fiftieth birthday in Jamaica with her ex-cop husband Bud Anderson. But when the body of the luxury estate’s owner is discovered locked inside an inaccessible tower, Cait and her fellow guests must work out who might have killed him – even if his murder seems impossible. Could the death of the man who hosted parties in the 1960s attended by Ian Fleming and Noël Coward be somehow linked to treasure the legendary Captain Henry Morgan might have buried at the estate? Or to the mission Bud and his secret service colleagues have been sent to the island to undertake?
Amazon Link / Kobo Link
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About the author
Cathy Ace was born and raised in Swansea, Wales, but has now migrated to Canada. Having traveled the world for many years, for both business and pleasure, Cathy put her knowledge of the cultures, history, art, and food she encountered to good use in The Cait Morgan Mysteries – a series of traditional closed-circle murder mysteries featuring a globetrotting Welsh-Canadian professor of criminal psychology. These books have now been optioned for television by UK-based TV production company Free@Last TV. The plan is to present each Cait Morgan book as a 90 minute made for television movie, the same format used for the international hit ACORN TV series featuring MC Beaton’s Agatha Raisin, which is also produced by Free@Last TV.
Ace’s other series is The WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries, which features four female professional investigators (one is Welsh, one Irish, one Scottish, one English). They tackle quirky – and quintessentially British – cases from their base in a converted barn at a Welsh stately home, set in the rolling countryside of the Wye Valley. Her standalone tale of psychological suspense, The Wrong Boy, has become a #1 bestseller on amazon. Cathy now lives on five rural acres in British Columbia, where her ever-supportive husband ensures she’s able to work full-time as an author, and enjoy her other great passion – gardening. She’s been shortlisted for the Bony Blithe Award three times in four years, winning in 2015; she’s also been shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story. Visit her website at cathyace.com.
All comments are welcomed.