Audio Bones

 by Carola

The official release date of the audio version of my 8th Daisy Dalrymple mystery was yesterday, though I heard at least a week ago from people who had already bought it!

Be that as it may, the Apatosaurus is back--scientists have even agreed to restore its old name, Brontosaurus, the name by which Daisy would have called it when she saw the vast skeleton at London's Natural History Museum. 

 

But it was amidst the smashed bones of a Pareiasaurus skeleton that Daisy found the body of the most-disliked curator in the museum...

                                             
I had a lot of help with research from the Archivist at the museum. He answered all my questions, supplied a plan of the building, and could have told me the names of the cleaners who went in at night to polish the glass cases in Daisy's time, had I wanted them. He even gave me a tour of the areas closed to the public, the research rooms, the backstairs, and the basement.

Quite apart from the displays, it's a fascinating building, well worth a visit just for the architecture.


http://www.nhm.ac.uk/

http://www.amazon.com/Rattle-His-Bones-Dalrymple-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B004XJ5MNO/












Daisy books now available in Audio:
Death at Wentwater Court,
 The Winter Garden Mystery,
 Requiem for a Mezzo,
 Murder on the Flying Scotsman,
 Damsel in Distress,
 Dead in the Water,
 Styx and Stones,
Rattle His Bones,
 Mistletoe and Murder,
 and Fall of a Philanderer.

How shall I kill thee? Let me count the ways...

 by Carola

With 25 mysteries published (and another on the way), I'm constantly looking for new ways to do in my victims.  I've used guns, gas, sharp blades,...

 


















... an explosion, strangling, carotid pressure, poisons, suffocation, drowning, falls...,

...being fallen upon (crushed by a stone angel monument), and common-or-garden blows to the head with a blunt instrument. I'm sure there are others I've forgotten.

I've never got around to electrocuting anyone, though electrical safeguards in the 1920s left something to be desired. And I've never used fire, simply because I find the idea altogether too gruesome.

Do the writers among those reading this have a favourite method of murder? Do you find yourselves trying to avoid a method you've used before? Is the method important to your story, or doesn't it matter much how your victim dies as long as he's good and dead? 

For me, it varies. The stone angel was hugely symbolic (Styx and Stones). In The Bloody Tower, I used the layout and history of the Tower of London to dictate the method.  In Fall of a Philanderer, it was alliteration as much as anything that made the Philanderer fall to his death!

Plant some flowers in your plot!

By Carola

Running short of time as always so I'm posting a link to a Spring blog I wrote that  talks about using flowers and other plants in your fiction.

http://bloodredpencil.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-flowers-that-bloom-in-spring.html

May (hawthorn) blossom in my garden

Heirs of the Body

by Carola

The 21st mystery in my Daisy Dalrymple series is coming out in trade paperback from Minotaur on May12th.

Set in England in 1927, it's the story of the hunt for the legitimate heir to Daisy's cousin Edgar, the present Lord Dalrymple. Claimants to the viscountcy turn up from all corners of the Empire. When his lordship invites four of them--as well as Daisy and her family--to stay at his country estate to celebrate his fiftieth birthday, mayhem ensues.

Reviews of the hardcover edition:

"Dunn’s forebears are writers such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. They set the standard for classic cozy puzzles, and Heirs of the Body’s unfussy prose and straightforward plot lend themselves well to this venerable tradition."
Adam Woog, The Seattle Times.


"...lively and engaging throughout the traditional whodunit series. As Daisy's aristocratic family become embroiled in another cozy mystery, Dunn offers a strong sense of place, tight and suspenseful plotting and well-defined motives--all serving to enrich the entertaining puzzle at the heart of the story." --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Order from:
Seattle Mystery Bookshop
Mysterious Galaxy
Mystery Ink
Amazon

A COLOURFUL DEATH now in paperback

by Carola

My second Cornish mystery comes out in a paperback edition in the US on October 10th.

The Cornish mysteries are set in the late '60s/early '70s, in Cornwall, one of the most picturesque areas of Britain.

The coast is indented with rocky, cliff-bound coves providing harbours over the centuries for fishermen and smugglers alike. With small towns, built of local granite and roofed with local slate, and glorious scenery, Cornwall has long been a haunt of holiday-makers--and artists.

Large print

One such painter, Nick Gresham, is the next-door neighbour of my protagonist, Eleanor Trewynn, a widow in her 60s. Thanks to an introduction from Eleanor, Nick succeeds in placing a couple of paintings in a London art gallery. He returns triumphant from London only to find the pictures in his shop have been slashed to ribbons.

Nick is sure he knows the culprit, Geoffrey Monmouth, an envious fellow-painter. Vowing vengeance, he sets off to confront him, while Eleanor, hoping to avert violence, accompanies him to Padstow.

They arrive at Monmouth's gallery to find him lying dead, stabbed in the back, surrounded by a crimson pool...

Nick is arrested for murder. Eleanor is determined to exonerate him, and very soon finds that a great many people had good reason to hate Geoffrey Monmouth.

Reviews:

Bolstered by strong characters, the fast-moving plot builds to a satisfying conclusion. --Publishers Weekly on A Colourful Death

Eleanor is a wonderful, multifaceted heroine and Manna from Hades [first in the series] is a first-rate story.... Carola Dunn demonstrates the same smooth writing and seasoned storytelling that readers have come to expect from her. --Mystery News

UK edition

Seattle Mystery Bookshop
Mysterious Galaxy
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colourful-Death-Cornish-Mystery/
http://www.amazon.com/Colourful-Death-Cornish-Mystery-Mysteries
Barnes&Noble
Waterstones