It’s Halloween! Yayyyyyyyyy. I love Halloween. I always loved Scottish Halloween: dooking for apples in a tub of water on the floor; dressing up as ghosts and witches; gorging on peanuts.

But now I get American Halloween! No more picking apples out of water with your gob. Instead – sweeties, delivered right into your hands by strangers. And no more peanuts. Instead – didn’t I just say this? – Sweeties. Candy. Actual treats. And you don’t need to be sacrificing bed sheets (ghost) and bin bags (witch) either. Instead you can visit any of the fine costume emporia that pop up throughout the land and select literally anything in the known universe to wear to the party.

Also, the lanterns are carved out of beautiful carveable pumpkins, instead of ugly, gnarled and basically impervious to knives rutabagas. I heart American Halloween.

On the other hand, the stakes are kinda high. I’m having a party tonight at my little houseboat on the Last Ditch Slough. All my friends from the Last Ditch Motel are coming. And I need to do a lot more than float a few apples, put peanuts in a bowl and poke eye-holes in a sheet. I’m serving a buffet of:

• severed fingers (hot sausages)
• skewered eyeballs (lychee kebabs)
• infected toenails (corn chips dipped in mustard)
• hens’ feet (hens’ feet)

And I’ve got to find time to strap on the machete with integral gaping wound and soak myself with fake blood. But I need to sink the beer in the slough beforehand, since I don’t fancy trying to manhandle a seventy-two pack of Blue Moon and a rope, while my chest’s accessorized. On the other hand, I don’t want to put the beer in the slough too early before the water actually cools down. And plus I’ve got clients this afternoon and – call me stuffy – but bereavement counselling with a fake machete poking out of your mashed rib cage would probably lose me my licence, even in Cuento.

Back home, where no one expects the beer to be cold, I wouldn’t have a problem, but here I’d get run out of town. Which reminds me: another thing I need to do is go to the shop and buy a bag of ice. Why? Why do we need a big bag of ice when no one’s got a sprained ankle? No idea. And why do I need to drive to a shop and pay for it when I live at the back of a motel with a free ice machine? Well, that I can answer. Because if any of my dear supportive friends ever saw me using the ice machine I’d never hear the end of it after everything I’ve said to them (about sprained ankles and watery drinks and all). That’s something just the same as back home. My friends mostly roast me and I roast them right back. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

You can read more about Lexy in Scot & Soda, the second book in the “Last Ditch” cozy mystery series, released April 8, 2019.

Scottish-born California transplant Lexy Campbell sails into trouble when her houseboat party ends on a deadly note.

Now settled in her little houseboat, moored in the slough at the back of the Last Ditch Motel, Lexy Campbell wants nothing more than to build her counseling business, avoid her mother’s phone calls and—who knows?—meet a nice guy. But when she throws a Halloween party for her motley crew of motel pals, the only single man is too old for her, too wrapped up in the case of beer chilling in the slough, and—oh, yes—too dead.

The sensible choice is to leave it up to the cops to identify the body and catch the killer. So faster than you can say “Tam O’Shanter,” Lexy and her friends jump into the case themselves, delving deep into their town’s past for the roots of a mystifying crime.

Purchase Link
# # # # # # # # # # #

Photo courtesy of Molly Weston

About the author
Catriona McPherson is the multi-award-winning and best-selling author of historical detective novels, set in Scotland in the 1930s and featuring aristocratic sleuth Dandy Gilver. She also writes darker – that’s not difficult – contemporary standalones, including the Edgar finalist The Day She Died. After eight years as an immigrant in northern California, she started the Last Ditch trilogy, written with love and no judgement (honest) about her new home. Scot & Soda (“frightfully funny” – PW) is the middle book of the three.

Find Catriona online: Facebook, Twitter, catrionamcpherson.com.

All comments are welcomed.