Campaign for the American Reader: What is Catriona McPherson reading?

Monday, September 16, 2024

What is Catriona McPherson reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Catriona McPherson, author of The Witching Hour.

The entry begins:

The brief for this assignment is very clear: do not simply list the books you’ve read. However, if anyone’s interested, everything I’ve read since December 2019 is on this page of my website.

But what have I been reading recently that I want to shout about?

Shannon Baker, a longtime resident of the Nebraska sandhills (although she now lives in Arizona), writes the Sheriff Kate Fox series of police procedurals. Or are they? Kate is one of a large family in a small town, where old feuds and fresh gossip confound every case she encounters. The landscape and lifestyle are brutal but the writing is lush and the stories are always absorbing, whether the background is the plight of migrant workers, the intricacies of policing the reservation or, as in the one I’ve just read, the big business of bucking bulls.

Still in the crime-fiction genre, but a different kettle of fish entirely, I thoroughly enjoyed...[read on]

About The Witching Hour, from the publisher:

War is hovering on the horizon, and Dandy Gilver wants nothing more than to keep her friends and family close. But then a call in the night places her oldest friend Daisy at the centre of a murder investigation. With her friend's future on the line, Dandy and her fellow sleuth Alec Osbourne must race to prove her innocence.

But when they reach the idyllic Scottish village of Dirleton, residents confirm a woman was seen at the crime scene - an ancient stone called the louping stane, still spattered with the victim's blood. And the longer the detectives spend in the village the more they question Daisy's involvement. They're not getting the answers they need, but are they asking the right questions?...