The Corpse Wore Tartan

September 6, 2010
In Dunnett's bland fourth Liss MacCrimmon cozy (after 2009's A Wee Christmas Homicide), a major snowstorm disrupts the Scottish Heritage Appreciation Society's annual Burns Night Supper, stranding the participants, including Liss, co-owner of the Scottish Emporium, and the staff of the Spruces, the Moosetookalook, Maine, hotel hosting the event. Before the snow gets too heavy, police officers Sherri Willett and Pete Campbell arrive at the Spruces to look into the theft of SHAS member Phil MacMillan's clan crest brooch, but they soon have a murder to deal with when someone slashes Phil's throat. In time-honored Agatha Christie fashion, the blizzard provides an inviting, insular crime scene bristling with suspects. While Liss and boyfriend Dan make a cute investigating couple as they race to catch a kilt-loving killer, Dunnett's vanilla prose and the unconvincing, underdeveloped plot produce a mystery as crumbly as a stale, underbaked scone.

October 1, 2010

Bad weather and bad blood taint several dozen kilt wearers.

The supper honoring Robert Burns is not without incident. One of the guests claims to have had his clan crest brooch stolen just before it. His twin brother antagonizes everyone at it. And a near-blizzard cuts out the electricity, the phones and all means of leaving The Spruces, the grand old hotel of Moosetookalook, Maine. Event coordinator Liss MacCrimmon (A Wee Christmas Homicide, 2009, etc.) and her beau Dan Ruskin rush about trying to placate the trapped revelers while Officer Sherri Willett and her guy Pete insist they can handle matters until the state police arrive with no help from amateur detectives, thank you very much. Still, Liss, who can't help but chat up the staff and the guests, learns that one twin's skean dhu, his ornamental dagger, may have been used to slit the throat of the other; that a discarded bagpipe may have been used to stun the victim first; that an ex-fiancée of one of them is wandering the halls; and that there are too many passkeys loose in the hotel and too many ungrieving suspects, including one twin's new widow. A snowshoe trek to town will help sort matters out, but not before both Liss and Sherri decide on the wrong killer and indeed misname the poor victim, and poor Dan is trussed up like a bit of haggis.

Woe betide the writer who dares people her plot with twins, a mystery cliché for years. 

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