#cathy ace

[jllongwrites]

It was a very murderous Christmas in 2017.

(Cathy Ace’s The Corpse with the Silver Tongue and Ngaio Marsh’s A Man Lay Dead were courtesy of my in-laws, while the complete collection of the David Suchet Poirot series was courtesy of my spouse.)

[dollycas]

The Corpse with the Iron Will (The Cait Morgan Mysteries) by Cathy Ace #AuthorInterview -Great Escapes Book Tour

The Corpse with the Iron Will (The Cait Morgan Mysteries) by Cathy Ace #AuthorInterview -Great Escapes Book Tour

The Corpse with the Iron Will (The Cait Morgan Mysteries) by Cathy Ace I am thrilled to welcome Cathy Ace to Escape With Dollycas today! Hi Cathy, Tell us a little bit about yourself.  First of all, (a lot of people ask me this) yes, Cathy Ace is my real name – my birth name, in any case. I’m Welsh, having been born and raised in Swansea, and I migrated to Canada aged forty. I now live half-way…

View On WordPress

[frankiebow]

Midweek Mystery: The Corpse with the Iron Will by Cathy Ace

Midweek Mystery: The Corpse with the Iron Will by Cathy Ace. A sudden death in moody, mountainous British Columbia has Cait and Bud looking for a killer close to home!

Read Chapter One of The Corpse with the Iron Will Chapter One: Be It Ever So Humble… I like Saturday mornings at home; there’s something about the prospect of the whole weekend stretching ahead that makes a Saturday morning sparkle with promise, and glint with possibilities. This one followed a bit of a late Friday night; late for Bud and me, anyway. We’d been binge-watching a Scandi-Noir…

View On WordPress

[bookwyrmshoard]

The Corpse with the Crystal Skull, by Cathy Ace

Pirate treasure, spies, old grudges… and murder most foul

Cait Morgan brings her eidetic memory, analytical mind, and psychologist’s insight to bear when a Jamaican holiday turns out to be anything but festive… and rather more of a busman’s holiday for Bud and his “retired” friends and colleagues, Jack and John. When the host of their holiday rental — an estate once owned by the privateer-cum-Lieutenant Governor, Sir Henry Morgan — is found dead in a locked room, the trio, plus Cait, Jack’s wife Sheila, and John’s much-younger girlfriend Lottie, must try to figure out who killed him and how. There’s also the fraught question of whether Freddie’s death was personal, or perhaps related either to Capt. Morgan’s fabled lost treasure or to the men’s mission.

Cait struggles a little in this novel, which I found refreshing given her usual competence and self-confidence. Her wits and deductions are as sharp as ever, but she is still a bit shaken by events from a previous novel, and she’s facing a situation in which several people she knows and trusts could have had a motive to kill Freddie. Cait’s tendency to analyze people, and her extraordinary ability to do so, cuts both ways: it makes her an insightful criminal profiler, but outside of her marriage, she doesn’t really connect to people on a personal level. That tendency leads to several awkward and sometimes painful situations in this book, but there are also signs that perhaps she is willing to grow a little in that area. (If I had to guess, I’d say that Cait’s Myers-Briggs type is either INTJ or ISTJ, well-balanced between iNtuition and Sensing, but waaaay over on the T side of the Thinking-Feeling spectrum.)

As I’ve come to expect from Cathy Ace, the mystery is complex and intriguing, the pacing is excellent, and the solution is clever and mostly unexpected. (As a sop to my mystery-reader pride, I hasten to add that my suspicions did lean at least partially in the right directions, and I had figured out a few minor bits and pieces before the denouement.) Ms. Ace always “plays fair” with her readers; if you pay attention, all the clues are there, but it’s even odds whether you’ll pick up the right ones, or put them together in the right order. Meatier than most of today’s light cozy mysteries, The Corpse with the Crystal Skull and other Cait Morgan novels are traditional mysteries where the puzzle takes center stage, and violence is never glorified: stories that will appeal to afficionados of Agatha Christie and other writers of mystery’s Golden Age.

Ace’s descriptions of Jamaica make the island come alive; I could feel the evening breeze and the sultry afternoon heat, hear the waves, see the flowers and the swift and glorious sunsets. This is, however, more the Jamaica of tourists and wealthy (white) foreign residents than the ordinary citizen’s experience; the latter is mostly out of sight, and Jamaica’s legacy of slavery and colonialism is only touched on here and there, except in the history of Sir Henry Morgan. Enjoy the descriptions of the island’s beauty, but bear in mind that you’re only seeing part of the picture, as it were.

All in all, I found The Corpse with the Crystal Skull a most enjoyable evening’s reading — it kept me turning the pages until nearly 2:30 am! If this is your first introduction to Cait Morgan, it can certainly be read as a standalone, as can all the books in the series; you’ll find references to events in previous books, but anything you need to know is explained, usually as part of Cait’s ruminations. (The book is told in first person, from Cait’s POV.) On the other hand, if you prefer to follow the main character’s personal life in chronological order, I suggest starting with book #1, The Corpse with the Silver Tongue.

[dollycas]

The Corpse with the Crystal Skull (The Cait Morgan Mysteries) by Cathy Ace #Review - Great Escapes Book Tour

The Corpse with the Crystal Skull (The Cait Morgan Mysteries) by Cathy Ace #Review – Great Escapes Book Tour

The Corpse with the Crystal Skull (The Cait Morgan Mysteries) by Cathy Ace

  About The Corpse With The Crystal Skull

The Corpse with the Crystal Skull (The Cait Morgan Mysteries) Cozy Mystery 9th in Series Publisher: Four Tails Publishing Ltd. (June 29, 2020) Print Length: ~300 pages Digital ASIN: B086FVBTTN

Welsh Canadian globetrotting sleuth, and professor of criminal psychology, Cait Morgan, is…

View On WordPress

[dollycas]

#Review / #Giveaway - The Wrong Boy by Cathy Ace - Great Escapes Book Tour @AceCathy 

#Review / #Giveaway – The Wrong Boy by Cathy Ace – Great Escapes Book Tour @AceCathy 

The Wrong Boy by Cathy Ace

  About the Book

The Wrong Boy Suspense/Thriller Setting – Wales Four Tails Publishing Ltd. (January 9, 2019) Print Length: 307 pages ASIN: B07KRNGV3R

Perched on a Welsh clifftop, the ancient, picturesque hamlet of Rhosddraig has its peaceful façade ripped apart when human remains are discovered under a pile of stones. The village pub, The Dragon’s Head, run by three…

View On WordPress

[dollycas]

#Spotlight - Murder Knows No Season: 4 novellas featuring Cait Morgan, the WISE Women & DI Glover by Cathy Ace

#Spotlight – Murder Knows No Season: 4 novellas featuring Cait Morgan, the WISE Women & DI Glover by Cathy Ace

NEW FROM CATHY ACE

Murder Knows No Season: 4 novellas featuring Cait Morgan, the WISE Women & DI Glover

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Women Sleuths Four Tails Publishing Ltd (November 17, 2018) Paperback: 273 pages ISBN-10: 1775175448 ISBN-13: 978-1775175445 Kindle ASIN: B07KNFWKYM (455 Pages)

FOUR DELICIOUSLY DIFFERENT SHORT NOVELS, ONE FOR EACH SEASON OF THE YEAR

WINTER:The Corpse with Eight Faces…

View On WordPress

[bettylouiseme]

A CASE OF AN UNSUITABLE KILLER By Cathy Ace The WISE Enquiries Agency 4th book is another nifty mystery. The Agency consists of 5 women of various backgrounds of all walks of life.