From the Booking Desk:
It’s always a wonderful day when Catriona McPherson visits BOLO Books. My blog is a regular stop on her marketing efforts for each book, but what makes them so special is the level of thought and work that goes into each of these posts. So many authors think that marketing is about getting as many eyes on your book as possible–and that is certainly a huge part of it–but it’s also about letting the reader know the person behind the words. To know Catriona is to love her and anyone reading her post below will feel like they have gotten to know her just a bit better today. To borrow a pun inspired by her new novel, Catriona McPherson is one good egg!
Catriona McPherson on Citizenship
Scot’s Eggs, the eighth Last Ditch Motel mystery, has a murder plot of course, plus a subplot, some gags, and a few callbacks to earlier stories. It also has a thread running through about Lexy Campbell studying for her citizenship test. Over-studying, in fact. Lexy is hellbent on learning all the constitutional amendments. She is driving her friends mad with it. But I had a ton of fun planting a reference to one of the amendments in each chapter. Of which there are twenty-six, including the epilogue. I had to miss one amendment out. It was quite easy to pick.
One of the more blatant nods, in fact the first one – to get the game going as it were, begins when Lexy realises someone has boarded her houseboat without permission one already grim Easter morning. She blats the door open and confronts him.
The guy, the stowaway as he would be called if this boat was mobile, took a step back and banged against the opposite wall of our narrow corridor. Good. It was only when the impact made various clanking noises that I realised he was a uniformed copper with all that stuff hanging off his belt as usual. So not just a stowaway. A violator of my right to be secure in my home against unreasonable search and seizure.
‘Are you in hot pursuit of a fleeing suspect?’ I asked him.
‘Uhhh.’
‘Are you concerned about the destruction of evidence?’
‘I’m-’
‘Is there an immediate threat to someone’s life or safety?’
‘It’s-’
‘Or do you have a warrant?’
Truly, it’s a terrible idea to mess with a pissed-off, hungover, menstruating woman who’s studying hard for her citizenship test. This idiot had cheered me up completely.
I’ve never studied for citizenship – I’m here on a green card and thank you for your ongoing hospitality (which is all I am going to say; I don’t need to say it) – but I did hear a story the other day that got me thinking about the questions that are, and those that should be, on a US and UK exam. The news item was about a hopeful immigrant to Britain who missed his citizenship test because he was supposed to get a lift (US ride) from his pal, but his pal was in the pub and the guy had been barred from the pub for excessive arguing with the question-setter during the last quiz night.
Which is the most British thing I have ever heard of. Instant A+ and welcome to your new country, right?
The actual questions are kind of hard: which two of the six Mrs H.T. Eighths got beheaded; what was the name of Norman land-ownership law; what is the date of Irish partition . . . and also kind of hilarious: roast beef, cricket, Carry On films . . . It’s a challenge to explain Carry On films, but imagine if the US citizenship test asked “Which animals are frightened by hearing Frau Blűcher’s name?” You can try mock “Life in Britain” exams here. I got 75% on mine.
The US equivalent doesn’t seem as tough. There are ten multiple-choice questions, rather than twenty-four. (I got 100% on the set I tried, although that did include a couple of lucky guesses.) Disappointingly, none of them are bonkers; Frau Blűcher doesn’t come up. So I’ve got some suggestions:
- How many side effects to a prescription medication is it possible to mention in one 90-second ad: A. 10 40 C. 138 D. infinity.
- Is Steve Martin A. talentless and off-putting B. a true polymath and adorable with it? (Except there would have to be the possibility of recusing yourself from answering if you had, at any point in the last month, had “Which of the Flitwick Triplets Did It?” stuck in your brain.
- A simple thumbs up or down on the madness (no judgement (I’m lying)) of including meat in side vegetables: turkey necks in the collard greens, shredded pork in the okra, hotdogs in the beans . . . Hm, how would we make that multiple choice? How about:
- Which of the following is a side dish: A. collard greens and turkey neck B. okra with pork C. beans in a sauce with hotdogs D. roast chicken with mashed potatoes, broccoli and corn, followed by strawberry shortcake.
That concludes my light-hearted look at the question of US citizenship procedures. I wrote SCOT’S EGGS in DC, six blocks north of the White House, last September-Christmas. During that time, I visited and marveled at many of the important architectural/monumental expressions of American values. I read the Constitution in the National Archive. I tried not to curtsy at the Lincoln Memorial. I wept at the Martin Luther King memorial. I looked up with swelling heart at the Supreme Court building.
I’m going to leave it there.
Cx
Jacket copy:
SCOT’S EGGS
Dec 2 2025
Severn House
ISBN: 978 1 4483 1286 3
It’s egg-hunt season, but Lexy’s spending Easter hunting a killer!
Not even Cuento’s Easter bonnet parade can distract Lexy Campbell from fertility woes and missing tourists Bill and Billie Miller. The Millers’ vintage Mustang has been abandoned, its interior covered in blood.
Is this a double murder, and if so, where are the bodies? Why were the Millers spending the night in their car? Did they pitch up at the Last Ditch Motel only to be turned away? Are they really dead? Trinity for Trouble are on the case!
As they start to identify the guests staying at the motel the weekend before Easter – including a Goth and a barbershop singer on stilts – disturbing evidence comes to light. Can Lexy see though all the deception to unmask the truth and save the Last Ditch?
Serial awards-botherer, Catriona McPherson (she/her) was born in Scotland and immigrated to the US in 2010. A former linguistics professor, she is now a full-time fiction writer and has published: preposterous 1930s private-detective stories about a toff; realistic 1940s amateur-sleuth stories about an oik; and contemporary psychothriller standalones. These are all set in Scotland with a lot of Scottish weather. She also writes modern comic crime capers about a Scot-out-of-water in a “fictional” college town in Northern California.
Catriona is a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime. www.catrionamcpherson.com
