Celebrating Contemporary Scottish Authors Month ~ December 2017

Scottish Literature on the Shelf!

I’m celebrating Book Week Scotland with a whole month of Scottish book reviews.

It was browsing the books in our local library that I noticed, not only the familiar authors who I am accustomed to finding down south, but also a plethora of unfamiliar names. Having moved to Scotland two years this December, I thought it would be lovely to celebrate some of the Scottish authors I’ve recently discovered.

I could have chosen famous names I knew well: Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson (who I met in my ‘Healing Paths of Fife’) or even Nigel Tranter, whose historical fiction captured my full attention during our first stay in Fife four years ago. I could have also written reviews for Alexander McCall Smith, Ian Mc Ewen or Ian Rankin (see my Goodreads page for reviews or star ratings) or even Kirkcaldy crime writer Val Mc Dermid, who wrote us a lovely encouraging email on the launch of our community library. I must not forget JK Rowling of course and Iain Banks …. oh the list could go on and on.

What a literate lot they are up here 🙂

Instead I’ve chosen less well known authors and I hope you will enjoy their books too. The sources of these novels ~ Waterstones bookshop, Amazon Kindle, the library, neighbours and even charity shops.

My celebration of Contemporary Scottish authors starts this Friday ~ 1st December 2017.

If you have a particular favourite Scottish author I’ve missed then I’d love to hear from you and I would be happy to include it as a guest review if you’d be kind enough to write one. Or, if you are a Scottish author and can send an independent review or would like to do an author interview ~

then I’d be delighted to hear from you by email

diana@dianamaryjackson.co.uk

Cozy Mysteries? Is it or isn’t it?

available on Amazon 

I have just tweeted for someone to explain to me what a ‘cozy mystery’ actually is. A tall order I know in 140 characters. Anyway, a tweeter sent me a link to Wikipedia. I know this may not be the definitive answer but it is certainly a start.

I questioned it because I was wondering if ‘Murder Now and Then’ would come under this category, so let me break this down.

 

 

• Sex and violence are downplayed or treated humourously  ~ certainly there are no explicit sex scenes and the violence is not graphic to the extreme
• The crime and detection takes place in a small and intimate community ~ in Murder, Now and Then, this is certainly true on the whole and the book has been likened to Midsommer Murders ~ say no more!
• The detectives are nearly always amateurs ~ No, in Murder Now and Then the detection is undertaken by police officer, although they do not always work ‘by the book’
• The book revolves around the amateur detective’s hobby ~ not true and yet there is an underlying theme of an interest in family history which binds the characters together
• The murderers are not psychopaths or serial killers and are usually known in the community ~ true
• There is little or no profanity ~ true
•  Emphasis is on puzzle solving and suspense ~ true
• There is a great deal of humour ~ not true

The verdict ~ six out of nine are true. I believe that readers who love cozy mysteries will enjoy Murder Now and Then even though it does not quite fit into the category.

With 24 good or excellent reviews so far, why don’t you give it a try and let me know what you think?

New paperback cover available for bookshops

Celebrating new book cover which will be familiar to many of you as the kindle book cover used since publication of

Murder, Now and Then: