So last month at Reiki Healing Circle, someone brought an Elizabeth MacPherson mystery by Sharyn McCrumb and put it on the giveaway table. Or almost – I believe I had it in my hand before it really landed. I used to devour mysteries, whole series, in weeks. And I was just in the mood.
After devouring this first one – Paying the Piper – I went to the Walnut Hills Library and ran down the entire list of these Scottish mysteries. The heroine is Scots – American, many generations gone, lives, works and visits in Appalachia, and now has a Scot for a fiance. (Sharyn also has a series of Appalachian history mysteries that are so great – but so scary, I can never read one again. Anne Rice does the same thing to me.)
Found I was missing one, through my own fault (another blog for that), and had to get it before I could continue. Now I’m happily immersed in these mysteries and hope they keep reproducing in the bag I’ve put them in. Elizabeth has a sardonic wit, a cousin and a brother who are worse, lots of interesting backgrounds, and enough clues thrown around to really keep me guessing. Plus very little in the way of gore. So they’re perfect from my point of view. I love good writing, pretty much no matter what the format. And when it’s a cozy British mystery with a Celtic angle – heaven has arrived.
She started writing these in the ’80s, and they’re still turning up every now and then. Long may they continue!