Valentine’s Dinner for One and an Ex-Husband’s Missing Wife with Catriona McPherson

Oh how I love a rag-tag bunch of characters!

In this episode Catriona McPherson reads to us from Scot on the Rocks, the third book in her Last Ditch mysteries. She and I share a love of stories with a rag-tag bunch of characters. (Examples that spring to mind for me are the TV shows Firefly and Parks and Recreation, and the movie Saving Grace, to name a few.)

This is not something you find every day in mystery novels because sleuths tend to work alone or with one partner and the characters change with each book because the mystery changes. But Catriona explains how, in the case of these books, the characters moved in and stayed, much to her delight.

This Week's Mystery Author

Catriona McPherson is the national best-selling and multiple award-winning author of 27 novels. She writes a historical detective series in the tradition of the British Golden Age, contemporary standalone psychological thrillers, and has recently begun as series of comic mysteries about a fish-out-of-water Scot in California “fighting crime and kale”.

In an amazing case of life imitating art, Catriona is Scottish but immigrated to northern California in 2010.

To learn more about Catriona McPherson and all her books visit CatrionaMcPherson.com

Press play (above) to listen to the show, or read the transcript below. Remember you can also subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. And listen on Stitcher, Android, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, and Spotify.

Excerpt from Scot on the Rocks

“It’s the most lud-i-crous taaaaiiiiime of the year!” I sang to myself as I traipsed through the streets of downtown Cuento en route to the Yummy Parlor Szechuan Restaurant and Takeaway.

When I was a kid, back in Dundee – or Dundee, Scotland, as they call it here – St Valentine’s Day meant a card if someone fancied you, knew your address, and had a stamp; a bunch of flowers if you had a boyfriend who hadn’t worked off whatever he did at the New Year’s Eve Party; or a white furry teddy bear with a red satin chest if you were really slow on the uptake and the kind of sickening Christmas present you get from someone who’d buy a teddy bear for Valentine’s Day hadn’t made you dump him in time. Maybe some wives put love notes in the lunch boxes of some husbands. Maybe some husbands put chocolates on the pillows of some wives. My dad bought my mum a card once. She opened it at the breakfast bar, frowned, said “For crying out loud, Keith” and ripped the front off to use for a shopping list. 

She would keel over in her tartan slippers and hit the ground stone dead if she could see Cuento tonight. Every shop window had a mammoth eruption of bright red and bright pink – two colours that newsflash do not go – and it didn’t matter whether the ...