{"id":5413,"date":"2023-11-20T07:05:40","date_gmt":"2023-11-20T15:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5413"},"modified":"2023-11-20T07:05:40","modified_gmt":"2023-11-20T15:05:40","slug":"catriona-mcpherson-hop-scot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/catriona-mcpherson-hop-scot\/","title":{"rendered":"Catriona McPherson: Hop Scot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Ditch #6<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This hilarious breath of fresh air from Catriona McPherson has rocketed on to my all time favorite Christmas mystery list.\u00a0 This series centers on Scot Lexy Campbell, who has settled in the strange land of California, and lives in a motel surrounded by an array of interesting characters who often help her solve crimes.\u00a0 Her \u201creal\u201d job is working as a life coach, but honestly, sleuthing takes front and center stage for her.<\/p>\n

In this outing McPherson has flipped the script, and sent Lexy and her buddies home (Lexy\u2019s home, anyway) to Scotland for Christmas.\u00a0 While it was a trip planned for just her and her fianc\u00e9e, their buddy Roger the doc says he needs to get out of town and buys them all swanky airplane tickets \u2013 how can they refuse?<\/p>\n

On the way over, Lexy warns her friends that Scotland is rainy, cold, grey and full of hostility at every corner.\u00a0 They ignore her.\u00a0 When Lexy\u2019s parents \u2013 who seem especially twinkly to Lexy \u2013 appear to pick them up at the airport, they are not taken to Lexy\u2019s childhood home of Dundee, but to the tiny town of Yule (adorable as it sounds) where they have apparently bought a castle that functions as a B & B.\u00a0 Lexy and her friends are the first guinea pig guests.<\/p>\n

As her friends rhapsodize over the adorable town and the beautiful home, it\u2019s not until Lexy meets the snarky barmaid at the local pub that she actually feels she\u2019s back in Scotland.\u00a0 When a skeleton is found in the cellar in a concealed room, all heck breaks loose, involving a baby owl, a broken tree branch, stolen holly boughs, and the various parts of the family who have just sold the place to Lexy\u2019s parents.<\/p>\n

This book was both charming and funny.\u00a0 The mystery is clever but it\u2019s only part of the fun of the story, which is just the right length, just the right number of characters, and just the right amount of sweetness and spice. In short, just right.\u00a0 I enjoyed this read about as much as any book I\u2019ve read in quite awhile, and that includes a re-read of a few Agatha Christie titles.\u00a0 Happy Hogmanay! —\u00a0Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Ditch #6 This hilarious breath of fresh air from Catriona McPherson has rocketed on to my all time favorite Christmas mystery list.\u00a0 This series centers on Scot Lexy Campbell, who has settled in the strange land of California, and lives in a motel surrounded by an array of interesting characters who often help her … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[43,398,328,1476,484,1477,1276,1070,486],"class_list":["post-5413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-catriona-mcpherson","tag-christmas","tag-cozy","tag-hop-scot","tag-humor","tag-last-ditch","tag-robin-agnew","tag-scotland","tag-severn-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5415,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5413\/revisions\/5415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}