Which Places do we Love?

 RHYS BOWEN: As you now know, my new book, THE CASTLE IN THE GLEN  is set in Scotland. I’d been wanting to set a story there for some time but couldn’t find any story idea that would fit until now. So I was delighted to send my heroine, Emma, up to the Isle of Skye to experience that atmospheric scenery as she tries to solve an old murder case. 

Scotland is one of those places that draws people…that mix of wild scenery, mists, storms, Celtic heritage and traditions and a wee bit of magic thrown in. We love to think about storm kelpies, shape shifters and small towns that only appear once every hundred years. When you set a story in such a place you start with a degree of expectation and even a sense of danger. Perfect for a mystery.

Thinking about this it’s interesting to me that some settings seem to resonate with readers more than others. Two of my books that have sold the most copies are the Tuscan Child, The Venice Sketchbook. There is something about Tuscany and Venice that draws people. We get a clear picture of hilltop towns, of canals and bridges. And of course they come with all the history and romance too. When you open a book about Tuscany you expect history, romance, sweeping vistas. If I set a book in Cleveland Ohio, I’d have to work hard to take my reader there.

Other places that seem to have instant appeal are Paris, of course. So many books with Paris in the title (yes, I’m guilty too). And look at Jenn’s Paris is Always a Good Idea, which I’m loving on TV!!! Then there is  the English countryside. Set a book in the Cotswolds or Cornwall and people will want to read it.  The other one is Nantucket. How many books have I seen recently with titles like The Nantucket Summer, the Nantucket Heartbreak. Now I’ve been to Nantucket and it is charming but there are so many charming villages up and down that coast. Why not the Gloucester Summer, the Kennebunkport Romance? I suppose Nantucket is an island, which makes it more appealing.

So I’d like your take on this: how important is setting to you? Is deciding on setting one of the things you do first? Or do you create your characters and then decide where to put them? Have you ever wished you’d set a book somewhere else? Why do you think certain places seem to draw in readers more than others? 

LUCY BURDETTE: I adored the Isle of Skye in your new book Rhys, but then all of your standalone titles have had wonderful settings. But think about Ann Cleeves for a minute. I suspect her best-selling series is the Shetland books, though I don’t know that for a fact. I like the backdrops in Vera and Two Rivers, but Shetland really stands out. You might remember that I took my family there a few years back because of Ann’s mysteries. It’s just as spectacular as she describes it, both in words and in the TV series. Kent Kreuger is also a master at setting–mostly the boundary waters of Minnesota. He’s able to use the setting to magnify the darkness of the books–this happens with Icelandic authors too.

Key West is different because it isn’t dark, at least on the surface. The contrast makes it an amazing place to set books. You don’t expect crime in such a beautiful place! Lots of my readers have been there once and the books allow them to travel back to a place they love. That’s how I feel about Paris!

HALLIE EPHRON: Scotland! Key West! Miss Marple’s St. Mary Meade! Philip Marlowe, Easy Rawlins, Harry Bosch, none of them could be rooted anywhere but Los Angeles. 

When I was writing my first novel I mistakenly thought that setting was “window dressing” - you needed characters to be rooted. But there’s so much more to it than that.So many great mystery novels, in particular, are particularly great because of the setting. (Hoping to one day to hang out with Cara Black in Paris on one of her tours of Aimée LeDuc’s hangouts.) Rhys, you totally ace it with THE CASTLE IN THE GLEN. *AND* we get to visit it in two timelines!!

JENN McKINLAY: Thank you for taking me vicariously to the Isle of Skye, Rhys! It’s on my list but this was so much easier than actually booking a flight. 

Setting is huge for me as an author. I like to write about places I want to visit because…research trip! As a reader, I definitely enjoy a well written setting but I’m more open to different places because I don’t have to write about them – if that makes sense.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I had the joy of taking myself to the Berkshires (in my imagination and memory)  for MOTHER DAUGHTER SISTER STRANGER, and it is fascinating how my lived experiences there for so many summers came back in the loveliest ways–and sometimes,  the scariest. And when you are actually there, you see and hear and experience things that make it so authentic. The turn of a phrase, or someone’s nickname, or how the windows fog up when you go inside.  

SO funny–the opposite works, too. When I wrote ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS, Tessa had to go to Des Moines. (too long to explain) I had never been to Des Moines, so I researched  like mad and it turned out that the Des Moines Public Library (and its surroundings) became the setting for several crucial scenes. So of course I went there on book tour, and I laughed for a solid hour. Because it looked exactly like how I had written it in the book! It was SO funny! I kept  thinking: My book is REAL!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Setting is SO important! One of my early influences was Tony Hillerman; there’s nothing in his books - character, crime, economy, dangers - that doesn’t flow out of the setting. Yes, there are times I wish I had written a series that took place somewhere other than the chilly Adirondack piedmont, usually when one of you are taking a research trip to the French Riviera or the English countryside!

There’s an interesting example of setting in Lee Child’s ONE SHOT. The midwestern city where the action takes place is never named, but Lee got the small details and the vibe so right multiple readers over the years have sworn it takes place in Columbus, or Cincinnati, or Omaha, or Kansas City, etc, etc. A lesson in how the particulars and the feel of a place make the setting for the reader, not the street names and locations.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: You couldn't have picked a more atmospheric setting than the Isle of Skye, Rhys! And what a fabulous place to "have" to do research!

I'm a sucker for setting, both as a reader and a writer. Setting has almost always been the first trigger for my books, a place that tickled my imagination, sometimes one already familiar and sometimes one I've wanted an excuse to visit. And I have to admit I'm most likely to pick up a book by an unfamiliar author if the setting appeals. Now, why we are attracted to certain places more than others is its own mystery…

RHYS: Now it's your turn. How important is setting to you? Are there some settings that instantly draw you to a book?

Discovering Scottish roots with Kathy Chung

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Where do you come from, and how much of that place still beckons? Whose genes did you inherit?

These are fundamental questions that we mystery writers ask of our characters, and often of ourselves.

We travel to the places where our mysteries take place, all in an effort to get the details right. But traveling to the places that shaped our own ancestors or our characters' pasts is a special challenge.

Introducing Kathy Chung who makes that challenge a lot easier and so much more fun.

For two decades Kathy has been conference coordinator for the annual Surrey International Writers Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. It's a fabulous several-day event (regularly featuring luminaries Diana Gabaldon, (until recently) Anne Perry and Donald Maas, just for example.)

Each year I so look forward to being welcomed to the conference by Kathy. She's lovely, competent, able to put out twelve competing fires at the same time.

What I didn't know is that Kathy is also a qualified genealogist specializing in Scotland, North America, and the rest of the United Kingdom. Today she's branching out, applying her organization and genealogical talents to a new venture that has me wishing I had ancestors from Scotland...

KATHY CHUNG: All the work I love best is some combination of puzzles, stories, and connection: researching and writing novels, genealogy, and planning conference and events to bring people together to learn, explore, and connect.

My own roots are Scottish, and I've been lucky enough to make several research trips to Scotland and to study family and local history at the University of Dundee. I've combined my love of bringing people together in a supportive environment to learn - and my years of experience planning the Surrey International Writers' Conference - with my love of genealogy and research in what to me is a dream job: offering supportive small-group research trips to Edinburgh.

At the end of 2025, I launched my new business, https://scottishgenealogy.ca, to offer small groups of amateur family historians from North America who have Scottish roots week-long research trips in Edinburgh. The first one is coming up in June.

The first trip is coming up June 13-20, 2026.

Explore your roots in the country of your ancestors or research your Scottish novel setting while getting a feel for the sights, sounds, and culture of Scotland. Connect with other people who love disappearing down research rabbit holes. I hope you'll join me!

HALLIE: This sounds so great and has me wishing my genealogical past wasn't rooted in Russian shtetls.

And asking: Are you interested in chasing down your own genealogical past and visiting the place(s) that are implanted in your DNA? If you could travel to discover your ancestors, where would you go (time? place?) and what would you want to know?

The Comic of Catriona's Heart

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  From the time I was oh, maybe 10, until the time I was maybe 14 (and found the Beatles), there was not a day that went by when my mother didn’t yell at me to “put down that comic book!” I know I read all of the Archie comics and things like Richie Rich and Scrooge McDuck Duck, but I quickly moved to Superman, and Wonder Woman, and Justice League of America. All of those super power heroes--- Supergirl, and Aqualass, and The Flush, and Green Hornet, and the Legion of Superheroes, and whoa, I really wish I still had them.

But that was in Indiana, and little did I know that Catriona McPherson, at the same time of her life but in Scotland, was reading comics, too. But they were ––from the looks of these––very different from the ones I read.

(As I said, I eventually moved onto MAD, then the Beatles magazines, and then Seventeen, and Glamour, and Vogue. So our reading preferences change. And the other day AARP Magazine arrived, but whatever.)

Catriona is always fascinating, but the childhood insights—and the comics she read that she shares with us today--I had never heard before of. Have you? Have you read any of these?

 

The Comic I Loved

By Catriona McPherson

 

The Mirror Dance, Dandy Gilver No. 15, is largely set in Doig’s & Co. the fictional publisher of a women’s magazine – The Rosy Cheek – and its sister paper – The Freckle for girls.

They are what Dandy Gilver calls “strenuously wholesome organs promising thrift without want and entertainment without corruption”.

Neither title ever existed, but the descriptions of the covers and the stories inside wrote themselves, because until I moved to the US, I spent every sojourn in a doctor’s dentist’s and hairdresser’s waiting room, leafing through The Rosy Cheek’s real-life equivalents.

I can’t remember who said this but there’s never been a better summation than “knit your royal family!”. And that was after a childhood steeped in papers and comics exactly as bouncing, cheerful, normative, and unsettling in retrospect as the Freckle anyday.

I lived not far from Dundee and that city was the home of D.C.Thompson, a fount of comics: The Beano – full of anarchic cartoons; The Dandy – an action-packed upstart (it said “Better than The Beano” on some covers), Oor Wullie – a Just William style rascal; and The Broons – a rabblesome family that prefigured the Royles ( not the royals!) or maybe Shameless.

DCT also published and still publish daily, weekly and weekend newspapers, and a slew of magazines. (They’re so ubiquitous that the only way to make it clear that Doig’s wasn’t Thompson’s was to put Thompson’s into the book in a cameo.)

And then there were those comics for girls. They’re probably better now – if I still lived there I’d nip and buy one to check – but in the seventies The Twinkle, The Bunty, The Jackie, and The Shout were roughly: fun with Mummy, japes at school, tears over cute boys, pregnancy scares. I ducked out at the Jackie stage and went to Cosmopolitan. But that was after a lot of years of boarding schools, ballet classes, ice skating accidents, secret diaries and blood feuds.

The comic of my heart was none of these, although I devoured them every week, spent summer pocket money on the Bumper Seaside Special and always found a Christmas Annual in my stocking. No, the comic I loved was the Teddy Bear Weekly. I still remember waiting to hear the letterbox flap on a Saturday afternoon when the paperboy delivered it. Joy until bedtime, guaranteed.

And I was pretty fierce about it as an adult too, because everyone I spoke to was convinced I had imagined it.

Pre-Wikipedia, when I tried to reminisce about a comic whose primary avatar was a teddy bear, I met with blank looks all round.

“Out with Mummy?” I’d say. “You mean, Watch with Mother?” would come the reply. “That was on the telly.”

“Paddy Paws the Puppy?” I’d try next. “Sounds like Enid Blyton,” they’d respond.

“Doctor David and Nurse Susan?” I’d pitch, getting a strain in my voice. “What?” I’d hear. “No way. I mean I know things were conservative but no one would ever …”

“Edward and The Jumblies?” I’d offer up. “A little boy called Edward who went to a magical land full of jumblies and befriended the king?” That’s when people would either say “Sounds like  fever dream” or “You mean ‘The Jumblies’ by Edward Lear? Well, there you go. You’ve invented a comic, Catriona, and you probably owe the Lear estate some royalties.”

I was beginning to doubt it myself – gaslighting is highly effective – when my parents cleared out their attic and gave me The Teddy Bear Annual from 1969.

Out with Mummy. Bam!

Paddy Paws the Puppy. Kapow!

Nurse Susan and Doctor David. Re-ordered to appease women’s libbers but definitely there. Booya!

And – drumroll – Edward and the Jumblies. Whoever owes the Lear estate for the use of intellectual property it is not me.

I was so happy to see all these characters again.

Did you read comics when you were a child, Reds? Have you looked at them since you’ve been grown up? There’s nothing quite like it. The taste of a madeleine doesn’t get a look in, if you ask me .

HANK PHILIPPI RYAN: Honestly, Catriona, I am trying to figure these out. I am baffled by these. I remember something called Highlights for Children, which they had in the dentist’s office, and which I loathed. But the nostalgia, I understand.

How about you, Reds and readers, did you read comics as a child?

 

National-bestselling and multi-award-winning author, Catriona McPherson was born in Scotland and lived there until immigrating to the US in 2010.

She writes historical detective stories set in the old country in the 1930s, featuring gently-born lady sleuth, Dandy Gilver. THE MIRROR DANCE is number fifteen. After eight years in the new country, she kicked off the comic Last Ditch Motel series, which takes a wry but affectionate look at California life from the POV of a displaced Scot (where do we get our ideas, eh?). Book 4, SCOT MIST, is coming in January. She also writes a strand of contemporary psychological thrillers.

Catriona is a member of MWA, CWA, Society of Authors, and a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime.  www.catrionamcpherson.com

Books as Wish Fulfillment by Kate Carlisle, author of The Little Black Book

Jenn McKinlay: She's here! She's here! My amazing plot group buddy and partner in all manner of shenanigans is here to share the latest on her upcoming release The Little Black Book (which is FANTASTIC)!!! Yay! Everyone, please welcome the amazing Kate Carlisle!

Kate Carlisle is the New York Times bestselling author of two ongoing series: the Bibliophile Mysteries featuring San Francisco bookbinder Brooklyn Wainwright, whose rare book restoration skills uncover old secrets, treachery and murder; and the Fixer-Upper Mysteries (as seen on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries), featuring Shannon Hammer, a home contractor who discovers not only skeletons in her neighbors' closets, but murder victims, too.

Kate: My husband and I love to travel. I’ll confess that the freedom to travel was a big part of why I wanted to be a writer. (And the tax write-off for research trips didn’t hurt!)

Right about the time the pandemic hit in March 2020, I was starting to work on the book that would become Little Black Book. Like so many other people, we’d had to cancel a trip, and planning future trips felt impossible with so many unknowns. I think that’s why I wanted this story to be an adventure, even more so than usual. I wanted to get away from COVID, to get out of my mind, out of my house, out of my life.

ORDER NOW

Writing Little Black Bookwas my escape, and I hope reading it will be an escape for you. As bookbinder Brooklyn Wainwright and her British security expert Derek Stone follow the clues discovered in a first edition of Daphne du Maurier’s classic Rebecca,the action takes them from San Francisco to the wine country commune where Brooklyn grew up and all the way to a castle on the shores of Loch Ness.

 

In essence, there are four settings in Little Black Book to take you out of your mind, house, and life: San Francisco, Dharma, a luxurious private jet, and Scotland. As a bonus, I’ve included one recipe from each of the four locales at the back of the book, plus a fifth recipe to tie them all together. I’ve included one of the recipes below to whet your appetite, but first. . . 

 

ABOUT LITTLE BLACK BOOK 

San Francisco book-restoration expert Brooklyn Wainwright is on the case when a rare edition of Rebecca leads to murder in this latest installment of the New York Times bestselling Bibliophile Mystery series.

Brooklyn and her hunky husband, security expert Derek Stone, have just returned from a delightful trip to Dharma, where the construction of their new home away from home is well underway, when a little black book arrives in the mail from Scotland. The book is a rare British first edition of Rebecca, and there’s no return address on the package. The day after the book arrives, Claire Quinn shows up at Brooklyn and Derek’s home. Brooklyn met Claire when the two women worked as expert appraisers on the television show This Old Attic. Brooklyn appraised books on the show and Claire’s expertise was in antique British weaponry, but they bonded over their shared love of gothic novels.

Claire reveals that during a recent trip to Scotland she discovered her beloved aunt was missing and that her home had been ransacked. Among her aunt’s belongings, Claire found the receipt for the package that wound up with Brooklyn and Derek. Claire believes both her own life and her aunt’s are in danger and worries that some complications from her past are coming back to haunt her.

But just as Brooklyn and Derek begin to investigate, a man who Claire thinks was following her is found murdered, stabbed with a priceless jeweled dagger. With a death on their doorstep, Brooklyn and Derek page through the little black book where they discover clues that will take them to the shadows of a medieval Scottish castle on the shores of Loch Ness. Under the watchful gaze of a mysterious laird and the irascible villagers who are suspicious of the strangers in their midst, Brooklyn and Derek must decode the secrets in Rebecca to keep their friend’s past from destroying their future....

Savory Cheese Scones

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 Tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp garlic salt

2 Tbsp sugar

8 Tbsp cold butter, cut into small pieces

1/2 cup Greek yogurt

1 egg

1-3 Tbsp cold milk, divided

2 oz sharp cheddar cheese, cut into 1/8-inch pieces

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese, divided

2 Tbsp fresh chives

Whisk or sift together the flour through sugar. In a separate bowl, whisk together the Greek yogurt and egg, then put in the fridge until you're ready for it.

Cut the butter pieces into the flour mixture until it resembled wet sand. Stir in the cold yogurt/egg mixture. The dough is meant to be crumbly, but if it won't come together at all, sprinkle with one tablespoon of cold milk and stir again. If it still won't come together, sprinkle with one more tablespoon of cold milk. Fold in half the grated Parmesan, all of the cheddar and all of the chives. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and form into a ball of dough, and then into a round disk, about 3/4-inch thick by 9 inches in diameter. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Cut the disk into 12 wedges. Put 1 Tbsp cold milk in a small dish and brush top of each scone with milk. The sprinkle with remaining Parmesan cheese. Bake about two inches apart until golden brown, about 20 minutes.

Do you love to travel? What dream trip would you like to take, if money were no object?