Death of a Doxy

I would like to introduce my guest today, author Chris Longmuir, of Montrose, Scotland.

What a challenge my author/friend, Chris Longmuir, has undertaken. Her latest series of crime novels features Kirsty Campbell, a policewoman in Scotland during and after WWI.

Death of a Doxy is dedicated to the memory of Jean Forsyth Thomson, Dundee’s first policewoman. The fictional Kirsty Campbell goes through much of the lack of acceptance and the condescension that Ms. Thomson did in real life. In Death of a Doxy, Kirsty Campbell does her best to be taken seriously as a competent policewoman, but it is an uphill struggle against the nearly all-male staff. She is keen to prove herself and solve the crime when a local prostitute is murdered.

We sympathize with Kirsty as she faces obstacles typical of the ones that plagued women in the work force nearly 100 years ago. Many of the townspeople thought a woman had no place in the police force. She should be at home minding the children and keeping the house for her husband.

In  Death of a Doxy, a prostitute is killed in the city of Dundee. Ms. Longmuir must keep her characters, the setting, and the events true to post WWI times. Attitudes were different in 1919. Clothing was of a different style. Some postwar food shortages still existed. Many inventions we take for granted today, were not even thought of yet. The author had a huge challenge not to slip up and mention something in her novel that was yet to be invented.

Ms. Longmuir’s writing is convincing as she transports us back to those post WWI days, showing us the frustration Kirsty (and working women of her time) endured.

The closer Kirsty comes to tracking down the killer, the more she puts her own life in danger.

The author keeps the tension rising as she guides us through the investigation.

I felt as if I were watching a movie that kept me well entertained.

About Chris Longmuir

Chris Longmuir is an award winning novelist who has published three novels in her Dundee Crime Series. Night Watcher, the first book in the series, won the Scottish Association of Writers’ Pitlochry Award, and the sequel, Dead Wood, won the Dundee International Book Prize, as well as the Pitlochry Award. Missing Believed Dead is the third book in the series.

Chris also publishes a historical crime series, The Kirsty Campbell Mysteries, set during and just after the Great War. This series features Kirsty Campbell, one of Britain’s first policewomen. There are currently three books in this series; The Death Game, Devil’s Porridge, and Death of a Doxy.

Her crime novels are set in Dundee, Scotland, and have been described as scary, atmospheric, page turners. Chris also writes historical sagas, short stories and historical articles which have been published in America and Britain. Writing is like an addiction to me, Chris says, I go into withdrawals without it.

To find out more about Chris Longmuir and her books, visit her blogsite and her website:

http://chrislongmuir.blogspot.ca

https://www.chrislongmuir.co.uk/

 

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Meet Carol Balawyder

My guest today is Canadian writer, Carol Balawyder. Welcome Carol. Please share some of your writing with us.

I am first and foremost a writer of fiction: Crime (because of my background as a criminologist) and women’s fiction (because, well, I’m a woman).

But the first book which I self-published , Mourning Has Broken,  was on grief, after my sister, Diana, died from a long battle with cancer. If you go on my web site’s blog you can read excerpts from the book. Here’s one of them:

Excerpt From I’m Going To Miss You, Caramel:

My father’s garage was a special garage because he parked his French Fry truck in it. When I think of myself standing as a child of three or four next to his truck I am filled with the sentiments of awe and wonder which is pretty much, except for certain exceptions, how I saw my father throughout his life. Now that he has been dead for over six years this wonderment and pride seems to increase with time although I do not quite know how to explain it for the simple reason that I don’t understand how this happens or why or what to make of it all. It seems such a private thing, in one way. And in another way so universal.

I guess this is what grief is about. The ups and downs. The anger. The sorrow. The bringing up of old wounds and the creation of new ones. Grief is about honor: Of the dead. The living. And oneself. And grief, I have learnt can turn into wonderment. My father is now stronger than ever alive in my heart.

Of course, the past is unattainable but if we’re lucky we can use the past as our guides as Gail Caldwell in her Pulitzer Prize Winning memoir A Strong West Wind proposes. “You can’t go back: to unboarded trains, to pristine battlefields before the dawn, to love that ended yesterday in Texas. Instead we have this stupid, lovely chaos, this burden and blessing called experience, the high beam of the past that is supposed to throw light on the future.”

http://carolbalawyder.com/

My wish is that whoever may read Mourning Has Broken – in part or in full –  will find relevance and be able to draw comparisons with his or her own experience of grief so that in some significant way I may touch and help them heal.

About me:

I have dreamt of being a writer since the age of twelve. I was the girl who found reading more interesting than boys and still find characters in fiction a lot more interesting than a lot of people I meet.

I am now retired from teaching criminology in a college and devote most of my time to my writing.

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Also available on amazon.com is “Missi’s Dating Adventures” an extension of the novel “The Dating Club” in which Missi is one of the main characters.

Missi Morgan is looking for a boyfriend. Maybe she’s just unlucky but she seems to attract the most unsuitable men you can imagine. After so many disappointing dates, her friends in The Dating Club persuade her to write about her experiences. At least some use could come from all these disheartening dates.

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Currently, Carol is working on two crime novels: “The Protector” and “Cora’s Cry for Help.” Watch for them after you check out “The Dating Club” and “Mourning has Broken.”