Enid Carmichael here, fellow Fog Lady and friend, which is why I cannot sit by and remain silent when one of our own has been hoodwinked by a Casanova. We’ve known each other going back forever, decades. Some would say we are elderly, though I’ve heard that eighty is the new sixty. We all live together in an elegant apartment building in San Francisco, minding our own business when we’re not solving murders. Then there’s Sarah, new Fog Lady and doctor-in-training. She is handy to have around when someone gets stabbed. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Olivia Honeycut, my usual ally in all things suspicious, joined a senior dating group. Why she wants a man back in her life at our age, I do not know. Stanley leaving for that young thing in a short skirt was the best thing that ever happened to me. No one to tut tut over my housekeeping, no one constantly asking what’s for dinner, no one with a frownie face when I add sherry to my tea—I could go on and on. But Olivia somehow thinks differently, and she’s hooked up with a smooth talker named Malcolm, and now it’s all “Malcolm this” and “Malcolm that.” She even snubbed Frances Noonan! She’s going to the symphony with Malcolm after she promised she’d be at Frances’s seventy-seventh birthday party. That woman is possessed.

Well, not for long because the next thing we knew, someone pitched lady killer extraordinaire Graham Parselle over the cliff at a Senior Singles outing. And we Fog Ladies believe it was Malcolm. We know he is lying about his past, about his wives, and probably about Graham as well. Who else could have done it? One of Graham’s jilted dates? His business partner in his business that’s failing? His current fling, who doesn’t like him very much? They all might have motives, but only Olivia Honeycut’s beau was red faced and panting at the scene of the crime. I think he ran to the top of the cliff, flung the guy off, and raced down again, all while Olivia was shuffling to the bathroom.

Anyway, I sure hope it’s Malcolm because we Fog Ladies are out of sorts. Harriet Flynn broke her leg. Sarah is hiding a secret from her own young boyfriend. Alma Gordon’s taken in too many strays, that gigantic Newfoundland puppy and that waif of a girl who never lifts a finger. Frances Noonan is feeling her age. We need each other. We need all of us. We count on each other like we count on early morning San Francisco fog burning off by midday. We want to count on Olivia again. We want her back.

The Fog Ladies: Date with Death, A San Francisco Cozy Murder Mystery Book #4
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Release: October 2023
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link

The Fog Ladies are at it again, spunky senior sleuths and an overstressed young medical resident solving murders from their elegant apartment building in San Francisco. They join a senior dating group, and romantic intrigue soon turns to murder. Graham Parselle, lady killer extraordinaire, plunges off a cliff on a Senior Singles outing. Did one of his dates pitch him over? Or is Olivia Honeycut’s new beau to blame?

About the author
Susan McCormick is an award-winning writer and doctor who lives in Seattle. She graduated from Smith College and George Washington University School of Medicine, with additional medical training in Washington, DC and San Francisco, where she lived in an elegant apartment building much like the one in the Fog Ladies books. Susan served as a doctor in the US Army for nine years before moving to the Pacific Northwest and civilian practice. In addition to the Fog Ladies series, she also wrote Granny Can’t Remember Me, a lighthearted picture book about Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, and The Antidote, a middle grade to adult medical fantasy. She is married with two boys and loves giant dogs, the bigger and slobberier the better.