The Corpse With The Sapphire Eyes
by Cathy Ace
I was taken in from the very beginning the clues that Cait finds keep you glued to the book you do not want to put it down.
~Bab’s Book Bistro
~Bab’s Book Bistro
I found this an interesting mystery in a fantastic setting…
~I Wish I Lived In a Library
~I Wish I Lived In a Library
This is a cozy mystery with interesting characters. There is plenty of drama, mysteries, treasures and murder. It is a clean read. Some of the secrets you can guess others I did not see coming.
~readalot
~readalot
The Corpse with the Sapphire Eyes(A Cait Morgan Mystery)
Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: TouchWood Editions (May 5, 2015)
ISBN-13: 978-1771511209
Synopsis:
It’s Cait and Bud’s wedding weekend and for the first time she feels like a bride—or at least, she’s supposed to. But then the rain won’t quit, the supposedly romantic Welsh castle feels creepy, and there’s a dead body on the stairs.
What first appears to have been the untimely, unfortunate, and accidental death of their wedding choirmaster quickly reveals itself to have been a murder. And when a series of mysterious events occur around the castle, Cait, Bud, and Cait’s sister Sian tackle the case of The Corpse with the Sapphire Eyes, attempting to solve the mystery before another sinister event can ruin their destination wedding.
About This Author
Originally from Wales, now-Canadian Cathy Ace writes the Cait Morgan Mysteries. In The Corpse with the Silver Tongue her foodie criminologist sleuthed in the south of France. The Corpse with the Golden Nose found Cait sniffing out a killer in BC’s vineyards. The Corpse with the Emerald Thumb met her when she was meddling in murders in Mexico. This time Cait is caught up in a true closed-room mystery in a classy casino restaurant in Las Vegas. When not helping Cait solve traditional, closed-circle mysteries, Cathy’s a keen gardener, ably assisted by her green-pawed chocolate Labradors.
Interview
Where are you from?
I was born and raised
in Swansea, South Wales. I lived in the UK until 2000 when I migrated to a
lovely rural area just outside Vancouver, Canada. I am both Welsh and Canadian!
Tell us your latest
news?
2015 is an exciting
and busy year for me! I’m honoured that The Corpse with the Platinum Hair (Cait
Morgan Mystery #4) is on the shortlist for the Bony Blithe Award for the best
Canadian light mystery, and am thrilled that the fifth Cait Morgan Mystery, The
Corpse with the Sapphire Eyes, will be launched on the fifth day of the fifth
month - the very month when I turn 55 - that’s a LOT of fives! It’s set in a
creepy old Welsh castle, so it’s also very close to my heart because its
location is very close to my home city of Swansea. There’s another Cait Morgan
Mystery coming out this year too: The Corpse with the Diamond Hand will be
launched in October – a fitting term since the book is set on a cruise-ship
sailing from Hawaii to Vancouver. Then there’s my new series: I enjoy spending
time with Cait, but this new series has allowed me to spend time with four
wonderful female private investigators who work on quintessentially British
cases of a cozy nature, and featuring a Welsh stately home. Yes, I’m going back
to my home country with this series, and the Women of the WISE Enquiries Agency
(one is Welsh, one Irish, one Scottish, and one English – hence the acronym)
are great fun to be with. The Case of the Dotty Dowager also introduces the
ducal seat of the Twyst family, Chellingworth Hall, set amidst the beautiful
countryside of Powys.
When and why did you
begin writing?
I was one of those
schoolchildren who was a voracious reader, and wanted to be a writer. Always. I’ve
been very fortunate to have earned my livelihood by writing for many decades; I
have worked in marketing, advertising and public relations, and have written
training courses and textbooks too. My first crime short story was published in
1989, but then my business life took over and I only returned to fiction in
2007. The first Cait Morgan Mystery was published in 2012.
When did you first
consider yourself a writer?
I “retired” from
running my own business when I was forty. I “retired” again from academic life
when I was fifty-three. If I think of being a full-time writer as my third
career I suppose I should say “when I turned fifty-three” but I feel as though
I still have such a lot to learn that I’m not sure I’ll ever think of myself as
a “writer”.
What inspired you to
write your first book?
My first short story
appeared in multiple anthologies and was recorded for BBC Radio 4. Following
the death of my father I realized that I probably wasn’t immortal and that I
should get on with writing fiction if that was what I wanted to do. I’d had the
story I ended up telling in The Corpse with the Silver Tongue trying to drill
its way out of my brain and onto paper for years, so I finally sat down and
wrote it.
Do you have a
specific writing style?
I suspect that’s
something my readers might be better equipped to answer than me. Because the
Cait Morgan Mysteries are told in the first person, and because Cait is a Welsh
Canadian university professor who shares my general background, I suspect that
“conversational” might sum it up.
How did you come up
with the title?
I’d written some
short stories and a novella about Cait before she emerged in her first novel
and they all had titles featuring the word “corpse”. When I put the proposal to
my publisher, TouchWood Editions, I knew I needed to tighten up on a type of
title that might work well for a series. Because my first victim was a man who
was very good at getting people to tell him things The Corpse with the Silver
Tongue came to me, then I played around with the idea of corpses with precious
body parts….and now we have them with a Golden Nose, an Emerald Thumb, Platinum
Hair, Sapphire Eyes and a Diamond Hand. There are two more planned for 2016,
but I’ll keep those titles under wraps for now!
Is there a message in
your novel that you want readers to grasp?
Each book tends to
focus on a particular theme – obsession, possessiveness, love/hate, honor,
often with local history, art, artefacts, and food thrown in along the way. In
The Corpse with the Sapphire Eyes we get the chance to study family dynamics at
very close quarters, and to consider what really constitutes functional
dysfunctionality. In all my books I try to illuminate the interactions and
tensions between people who are born and bred with a locale in their blood,
those who are long-term incomers and those who are outsiders, just passing
through. I find it to be fertile ground for tension – and murder too.
What would you like
my readers to know?
My one desire is that
people will enjoy my books. I really do believe that enjoyment is a great gift,
and I do my very best to write entertaining books that allow readers to escape,
be puzzled, be informed, be made to feel peckish, and end up feeling they have
spent time in a place and with people they’d like to visit again…and where they
find out who did what to whom, how they did it and why they did it, along the
way!
Author Links:
Website: www.cathyace.com
Twitter: @AceCathy
Tour Participants
May 5 – View from the Birdhouse – Interview
May 5 – 3 Partners in Shopping, Nana, Mommy, & Sissy, Too! – Spotlight
May 6 – Babs Book Bistro – Review
May 7 – I Wish I Lived in a Library – Review
May 8 – Griperang’s Bookmarks – Guest Post
May 9 – readalot – Review
May 10 – deal sharing aunt – Interview
May 11 –Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – Interview
May 12 – Tea and A Book – Review, Interview
May 13 – MysteriesEtc – Review
May 14 – Brooke Blogs – Review, Guest Post
I need to go back and read all these books, they sound very interesting!
ReplyDeleteThanks Grandma Cootie - I really hope you enjoy them when you do :-)
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