Please welcome Cathy Ace, VP of the Crime Writers of Canada:

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Thanks for inviting me to visit, Auntie M – I’m so happy to have the chance to drop by to introduce you to my new characters.

With five Cait Morgan Mysteries in print (#6, THE CORPSE WITH THE DIAMOND HAND, comes out in October 2015) and having just won the Bony Blithe Award for the best Canadian Light Mystery for #4, THE CORPSE WITH THE PLATINUM HAIR, I have to admit I have been worrying about how the women of the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries would be accepted, but I’m pleased to say quite a lot of folks are already enjoying spending time with them.

I’ve always relished Downton Abbey, but when I decided to set a group of four female private eyes to work on a case at a stately home I made two big decisions: I realized I wanted a modern-day setting, and to be able to use technology as it’s available now to help solve their puzzling (and quintessentially British) cases; I also made the decision to go back to my home country of Wales for the setting…though I am told the series is perfect for Anglophiles (maybe there’s a word to coin here – Welshophiles?).

THE CASE OF THE DOTTY DOWAGER is the first novel-length outing for the four women of the WISE Enquiries Agency: one is Welsh, one Irish, one Scottish and one English (hence the acronym) but, whilst they work well together and effectively use their complementary skill-set, what I’m enjoying is that they are all so different: Carol Hill is a Welsh computer whiz in her mid-thirties, happily married and delightedly pregnant; The Hon. Christine Wilson-Smythe is the brilliant and beautiful daughter of an Irish viscount, who’s fearless in the way only someone who is single and in their twenties can be; Mavis MacDonald is a retired army nurse, a widow in her mid-sixties, she has two grown sons, grandchildren, and an ailing mother in a nursing home close to her family in Scotland; then there’s Annie Parker, born to St. Lucian parents within the sound of Bow Bell–she’s a cockney through and through – her abrasive nature a shield against a world that’s not been too kind to her, and weathering her very sweaty mid- fifties.

Throw in Althea Twyst, the dowager duchess of Chellingworth who, at almost eighty, is just as active as her Jack Russell, McFli, but who might be losing her marbles (according to her son, Henry, the eighteenth duke) and you’ve got four women enquiring into the life of a fifth – who might not take kindly to their interest.

So why not grab yourself a cuppa, and indulge in a delightful romp through the Welsh countryside with these women? Book two in the series, THE CASE OF THE MISSING MORRIS DANCER, will be published in the UK in October 2015, and in the US and Canada in February 2016, so, if you enjoy meeting these women, you won’t have to wait long before you can tackle another case with them.

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Cathy Ace is the BC Bestselling author of the Bony Blithe Award-winning Cait Morgan Mysteries and the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries. You can find out more about Cathy and her work at her website: http://cathyace.com/ on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cathy-Ace- Author/318388861616661?ref=hl or on Twitter: @AceCathy