Edith/Maddie writing from a wintry north of Boston.

But it’s never too cold to welcome back the delightful and brilliant Catriona McPherson, especially when she has a new book out – today!

Scotzilla is the seventh Last Ditch mystery, and if you haven’t already picked up this series, you should. It’s one of my favorites. Here’s the blurb:

Lexy Campbell is getting married! But in the six months of planning it took to arrive at the big day, she has become . . . a challenge. Friendships are strained to breaking point, Lexy’s parents are tiptoeing around her, and even Taylor, her intended, must be having second thoughts. Turns out it’s moot. Before the happy couple can exchange vows, Sister Sunshine, the wedding celebrant, is discovered dead behind the cake, strangled with the fairy lights.

Lexy’s dream wedding is now not just a nightmare: it’s a crime scene. She vows not to get drawn into the case, but the rest of the Last Ditch crew are investigating a bizarre series of goings-on in Cuento’s cemetery and every clue about the graveyard pranks seems to link them back to Lexy’s wedding day. Will the Ditchers solve the case? Will Sister Sunshine’s killer be found? Will Lexy ever get her happy-ever-after? Not even Bridezilla deserves this. 

No Bone to Pick with Graveyards

So wrote Samuel Beckett, in 1946. He went on “I take the air there willingly, when take the air I must.” Doesn’t sound like him, does it? Well, it got dark right after that and sounded exactly like him in the end. So let’s leave it there. I genuinely have no bone to pick with graveyards. I like a good cemetery for taking the air in.

That’s why I enjoyed writing the four cemetery geeks in Scotzilla so much, even though their enthusiasm for the fictional necropolis of fictional Cuento, CA, is a bit too keen at times. There’s nothing horrible in the book, I hasten to add: they’re just a bit unhinged in their devotion to the social and cultural history of graves. They wouldn’t approve of me at all, the way I think cemeteries are just pleasant places for a stroll.

It started with my Granny MacDonald. She loved a cemetery walk. In her case, I think it arose in nosiness. She lived in the same smallish town for a lot of years and, even if she never got past the front door of someone’s house, once they died she could make her own judgement about the size, style, wording, upkeep and – mostly – cost of their memorials.

For me, the words chosen and the words not chosen are always fascinating. When I see an “ in Memory of Joe Bloggs, husband of Joella Bloggs and father of Joseph Junior” and then in newer engraving below “In loving and eternal memory of Joella Bloggs, loyal wife of the late Joe and dearly beloved Mother of her devoted son Joseph” – and I really did see that once – I’m left wondering who hated whom in the Bloggs family and why. The love certainly wasn’t evenly shared around. “Loyal” is quite a choice, isn’t it?

Abercorn Cemetery, walking distance from my childhood home.

And it’s hard to feel warm towards those Victorian patriarchs whose names are finally chipped in at the bottom of the headstone after they’ve worn out three wives and buried eleven of their twenty-odd offspring.

Much more accessible warm feelings belong to those loving families who make the cemetery where they’ve laid a sorely-missed loved one into an extension of their home. The title character in A Man Called Otto, goes to visit his wife in the cemetery, taking a flask of coffee and a folding chair, and fills her in on all his news. (The protagonist in the book, A Man Called Ove, might do it as well, but I haven’t read it.) And a dear friend of mine and probably of yours too, some of you, is currently taking great comfort from reading comic novels to her son at his graveside. If grief is the last act of love, that particular love was a hell of a show.

I admire the honesty of going to a grave to talk to a loved one. Or maybe “matter-of-factness” is a better term. The flip side of that is the scorn I felt when the residents of a quite posh street of houses, again in my home village, got together and changed their address from Cemetery Road, to Ferrymuir Lane. (There’s still a cemetery at the far end, whether they like it or not.) Likewise, I can imagine buying a gravedigger’s cottage called Gravedigger’s Cottage more easily than I could see myself buying a Yew Tree Cottage, trying to style out its quiet neighbours. Hey, that reminds me!

And I don’t mind a bit of humour in a graveyard either. Dorothy Parker’s “Pardon my Dust” is famous, although the joke is kind of obsolete now. Jack Lemmon’s gravestone reads “Jack Lemmon in”, which is adorable. And Spike Milligan (Irish comic) went with “I told you I was ill”. I hope his widow thought it was funny.

But I’m just as happy in cemeteries and graveyards with no witty epitaphs, no famous names – no names at all if they’ve worn off the soft sandstone over the centuries. Brompton Cemetery lists its celebrity . . . departed, but it’s most loved by the residents of West London for being a green space and a wildlife haven in the middle of such a busy city.

My favourite cemetery of all – actually a graveyard, because it’s set around a church – is at St-Just-in-Roseland in South Cornwall. It’s a small, semi-tropical garden full of palms and passionflowers, bougainvillea and agapanthus – so exotic (before I moved to California) and it’s in the most exquisite setting by the mouth of a river in a tiny, sleepy hamlet. I have no idea why I don’t have any pictures of it after the number of times I’ve been, but click here and you’ll see.

It’s so tranquil and such a perfect place to relax. In the daytime. I need to come clean. Even though I have no supernatural beliefs, I’m still a product of my culture – Bram Stoker to Buffy Summers – and all of my cemetery appreciation disappears when the sun goes down. I could not walk through a graveyard in the dark if you paid me. I know what happened to Tam O’Shanter. I know he’s fictional. I know that doesn’t matter at night.

In Scotzilla, the Last Ditch crew spend quite a bit of time in the cemetery in darkness. I’m like a brave general sending my troops off where I’d never dare to go.

Readers: How about you? Are you a twenty-four-hour graveyard coper? Do you avoid them in the day-time too? Can you read about exploits far beyond your own courage? I’d love to know.

Serial awards-botherer, Catriona McPherson (she/her) was born in Scotland and immigrated to the US in 2010. She writes: preposterous 1930s private-detective stories; realistic 1940s amateur-sleuth stories about a medical social worker; and contemporary psychological standalones. These are all set in Scotland with a lot of Scottish weather. She also writes modern comedies about a Scot out of water in a “fictional” college town in Northern California. Scotzilla is book number seven of what was supposed to be a trilogy. She is a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime.  www.catrionamcpherson.com