Scot Mist

Catriona McPherson

Jan 2022 · A Last Ditch mystery Book 4 · Severn House Publishers Ltd

About this ebook

Despite efforts to create a safe environment to see out the pandemic, the residents of the Last Ditch Motel face more dangers than they imagined possible in this hilarious yet claustrophobic mystery. March 2020 and Operation Cocker is a go! The owners of the Last Ditch Motel, with a little help from their friend Lexy Campbell, are preparing to support one another through the oncoming lockdown, offering the motel's spare rooms to a select few from the local area in need of sanctuary. While the newbies are settling in, an ambiguous banner appears demanding one of them return home. But who is it for? Lexy and her friends put a plan into action to ward off the perpetrator, but the very next night, a resident disappears and a message scrawled in human blood is found. As California shuts down, the Last Ditchers make another gruesome discovery. They tried to create a haven but now it seems as if everyone's in danger. Is the motel under attack from someone on the outside? Scary as that is, the alternative is worse by far.

Ratings and reviews

California, family, family-dynamics, friendship, hotel, houseboat, laugh-out-loud, laugh-riot, law-enforcement, murder, murder-investigation, pandemic, punny, shelter-in-place, situational-humor, snark-fest, verbal-humor, farce***** Deuce Hardware?!? This is the absolute best antidote to 2020-2022 with all its restrictions and logistical problems! Set in the early days of quarantining etc, it spoofs a wacky bunch of Californians who only have a small clue of the madness yet to come. They gather in the Last Ditch Hotel and the Squeeky Kleen Laundromat to try to control who they are stuck with IF sequestering is ordered. They include vulnerable seniors (who swim naked), dependents of first responders, people in danger of domestic abuse, to total 17 VERY interesting people. Then comes the first peculiarity. Followed by a murder and the very strange investigation of this closed circle mystery. DO NOT HAVE HOT LIQUIDS AT HAND WHEN READING THIS BOOK! I requested and received a free e-book copy from Severn House via NetGalley. THANK YOU!

About the author

Born and raised in Edinburgh, Catriona McPherson left Edinburgh University with a PhD in Linguistics and worked in academia, as well as banking and public libraries, before taking up full-time writing in 2001. For the last ten years she has lived in Northern California with a black cat and a scientist. In 2020 she has been shortlisted for a third Mary Higgins Clark Award, for Strangers at the Gate, and won a Left Coast Crime 2020 Lefty Award for the Best Humorous Mystery for Scot and Soda.