Books: Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder
Exclusive interview with author Catriona McPherson and a review of her sixth novel in the sleuth Dandy Gilvers series
Rating: three stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“I had been playing at houses in the last book and I decided I wanted to play at shops,” says Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder author Catriona McPherson.
“So, Dandy Gilver goes to investigate rival department stores. Great fun.”
McPerson paints an engaging picture of the life of sleuth Dandy Gilvers. You will feel you are with her as she adjusts to life in Scotland after World War I. The social classes shift and adjust to the new world where appearances are everything – even in the upper middle classes. They have servants, though not as many as at the large houses of the aristocracy.
Dandy enjoys being independent and enjoys solving mysteries, even though her mother-in-law is horrified at Dandy wanting to work. Dandy is hired to find Mirren Aitken, heiress to Aitken’s Emporium. She uncovers a decades-long feud between the Aitkens and the Hepburns, another family in trade. To spice things up Mirren is then found dead during the Emporium’s 100th–year anniversary party.
For her research, McPherson needed a house in Dunfermline, where the book is set, to use as the family home of the Aitkens and a stage for the characters of Aitken’s Emporium: tailors, mantlemakers, silk merchants and a domestic bazaar. “It’s a piece of lucky timing,” says McPherson. “As I was standing on the street looking through the gateway at Abbey Park House someone drew up in a car and stopped. I melted away, kind of embarrassed, but watched from a distance. An estate agent started to attach a for sale sign to the gatepost. So I went to the office, got all the particulars, floor plans, pictures of the rooms…everything.”
McPherson also relied on the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, the City Library, and the local public library in Dunfermline. “Not only the staff but the reading public helped me reconstruct the streets of old Dunfermline,” says McPherson who’s from Scotland originally. “We’re not a gushy people, the Scots, but give us a job of work and we roll up our sleeves, spit on our hands and take a good firm grip.”
“I spent a bit more time in the library this time too to make sure I’d got the modes of the day right for House of Hepburn…clothiers, glovers, milliners and hosiers,” says McPherson. “It wasn’t too much of a grind. All the usual traipsing around, gawping at things.”
McPherson is an experienced researcher, having worked in a local history library, and takes an unusual approach to writing. “I have to try quite hard not to have ideas while I’m writing because they leak into what I’m busy doing and then they’re used up. So I sit down and try to have an idea exactly when I need them. It sounds unlikely but it works for me.”
McPherson is editing the first draft of her next Dandy Gilver novel. “It’s the Stephen King method,” says McPherson. “Write first, make up what you don’t know, keep a note of what you made up, check out your notes and only change what you have to. I came up with it myself but I felt a lot better when I found out that a ridiculously successful writer does it that way too. I think it helps you not end up with stereotypical material, You can keep anything that’s even slightly possible. If I did the research first I’d probably get bound up in the things I found and not go off into flights of fancy.”
McPherson lives in northern California outside Davis. Her husband is on the faculty at the University of California. “It’s a big change from where I was born and where I lived until 2010,” says McPherson. “I come from a village in Scotland called Queensferry where my father was born and his father was born. My mother, who arrived after her wedding in 1952, is still considered a newcomer.”
Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder by Catriona McPherson. Hardcover, 304 pages, Publisher: Minotaur Books (May 22, 2012), Language: English. ISBN: 9781250007377. $24.99
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