Spotlight & Giveaway: THE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO MURDER by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, & Karen White

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome authors Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, & Karen White to HJ!

Hi Beatriz , Lauren, & Karen and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you all about your new release, THE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO MURDER!

Hi!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Agatha Christie meets Murder, She Wrote in a witty locked room mystery and literary satire.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

The very first line–”Detective Chief Inspector Euan Macintosh had never
seen a crime scene like this one before.” It really sets up the story so perfectly!

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• Our original title was FIFTY SHADES OF PLAID. Why, you may ask. Well, funny story. Over a decade ago, three authors walked into a bar– us! It was the sort of insta-bond our fictional characters don’t have. That fateful night, we decided we wanted to write a book together and that we should set it in Scotland and call it… FIFTY SHADES OF PLAID. Because who doesn’t love men in kilts and playful sheep?
  We did go on to write a book together– and then another and another– none of which had any shades of plaid, but we never forgot our original idea.
  The title was quickly discarded by our publisher, but we worked it into the book anyway.
• The island of Kinloch and naughty Ned were loosely inspired by the Isle of Rum, known as Scotland’s most debauched island, where the son of a Victorian industrialist threw wild Edwardian parties, complete with Gaiety Girls and opium. There’s even a Kinloch Castle on Rum, which is where we got the name for our island.
• Our romance roots go deep in this book, with playful homage paid to Scottish hero tropes, larger-than-life writers from the golden age of Eighties and Nineties romance, and the ever-popular “babylogue” epilogue.

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

All of our books always feature three distinct protagonists– so in this case, we’ve got three heroines, all very different women, as well as three very different heroes.

There’s Cassie, our cozy mystery writer from the South, mother of umpteen small children and writer of umpteen mystery series, who’s going through a bit of a rough patch with her hunky contractor husband.

Then you’ve got uptight Emma Endicott, historical novelist and impoverished blue blood New Englander, who has her reasons for trust issues– and finds her own Scottish laird, who also wrestles with issues of family, legacy, and having more social cachet than cash.

And, finally, slinky (or possibly not really so slinky?) paranormal erotica author, Kat de Noir, who talks a big game, but really uses her sexuality to push away men rather than attract them– until it takes the investigative skills of a Scottish detective inspector to see the truth beneath her tough exterior.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

We can’t give away too much, but let’s just say that we all absolutely had a ball writing the grand denouement, which might just possibly involve a helicopter rescue and an 80s romance novelist. A close second might be the scene in the Kinloch spa, in which all three characters get a little more self-care than they bargained for…

Readers should read this book….

A: For a book that’s more than a “fun” read (although it’s definitely that) with a twisty plot, an exotic Scottish setting, and a cool mystery, but also for a book that is at its heart about the strength and endurance of women’s friendships…along with a little behind-the-scenes look at the ups and downs of writing and publishing!

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

For Karen, there’s book number three in the New Orleans-set ROYAL STREET mystery series, THE LADY ON ESPLANADE and a return to the South Carolina Lowcountry in a brand new novel about two estranged sisters coping with their mother’s dementia and the lingering mystery of a girl’s disappearance two decades earlier.

For Beatriz, there’s HUSBANDS AND LOVERS, a July Book of the Month Club main selection in which a single mother searching for a kidney donor for her son uncovers the bittersweet story of her grandmother’s love affair in 1950s Egypt…and reconnects with the father of her child, who’s now a world-famous singer-songwriter.

And for Lauren, there’s The Girl from Greenwich Street (coming out March 4, 2025), which she calls her Law and Order:1800 book, historical fiction about a notorious true crime. In January 1800, a young woman’s body was found drowned in the Manhattan Well and Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr were forced to team up as counsel for the defense in a murder trial that riveted all of New York City.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: Print copy of THE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO MURDER by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, & Karen White – US only

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Are you a Kat, a Cassie, or an Emma?

 
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Excerpt from THE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO MURDER:

Detective Chief Inspector Euan Macintosh had never seen a crime scene like this one before.
Torches guttered in iron holders along the walls of the octagonal chamber, illuminating the body of a man, dressed in little more than strategic strips of black leather, sprawled face downfacedown in a puddle of something that gleamed pale and sticky. The sickly sweet scent made Euan feel like retching—or that could just be the sheer amount of punch he’d consumed at the Kinloch ceilidh last night. Did it count as last night if one hadn’t been to bed yet?
Erotic tapestries lined the walls: Europa, pursued by a bull; Leda, in the process of being ravished by a swan. The torchlight glinted off bare breasts, reaching arms, arched necks, and the bare buttocks of the man splayed on the floor.
A pseudomedieval-medieval chalice, enormous, inlaid with rough-cut jewels, lay where it must have fallen from the man’s outstretched hand, spilling its honeyed contents.
A stag’s head lolled on the flagstones next to the body, lopsided due to the loss of a branch of antlers on the left.
The inspector didn’t need to ask what had happened to the missing antler. It was protruding from the back of the man lying on the floor, into which it had been shoved with considerable force.
No chance of natural death here. Euan repressed the urge to curse. His first murder since returning to Kinloch and it couldn’t be a simple brawl at the pub gone terribly wrong.
A sheep bleated, nosing at the puddle spreading out around the corpse.
A stern-faced man in a kilt tugged the sheep away. “Dinna ye be drinking that, Beatrice. Ye don’t know where it’s been.”
Calum MacDougal. GillieGhillie. General factotum at Castle Kinloch. Employed by the man who now lay face downfacedown in a pool of mead wearing what looked like a woman’s dominatrix costume.
Euan gestured at the body. “I take it that’s—”
“The novelist. Aye.”
American. Had written a book Euan hadn’t bothered to read because it sounded like poncey nonsense. Rented out the castle for writers’ retreats at Castle Kinloch. Euan had never met the man but he’d seen his face on the posters the man had plastered across the island.
He didn’t look like his poster now.
“I’ve rung the medical examiner,” said Calum expressionlessly.
Euan felt bile rise in his throat—and not just because of the scene before him. Even though he’d seen nothing exactly like this, he hadHe’d Euan had seen all sorts of brutality seen far worse during his time with the Met in London. Gun violence, knife violence, brass-knuckled violence. But those had been simple crimes compared to this. And there, the suspects weren’t people he’d known from a boy.
“You found the body?” Euan asked brusquely.
“That’d be me nan.” Calum looked sideways at Euan. “Or would ye be needin’ her full name for the record, Chief Inspector?”
“Where is Mrs. MacDougal?” Euan asked. “I’ll need to speak to her. For the record.”
“At the castle. I sent her back to get warm. She was fair fashed as ye may imagine.”
Euan followed Calum through a tunnel that led from the freestandingfree-standing tower—a landmark on Kinloch, the Obelisk—to the castle itself, where Morag MacDougal stood like a wraith in the gGreat hHall, her white face and white hair standing out starkly against the black of her dress, making her look like a black-and-whiteblack and white photo of herself.
Euan had known Morag since he was a boy. She’d rapped his knuckles with one hand and fed him scones with the other. And now he had to question her about a murder. It felt like an impertinence.
Calum made a clucking noise and wrapped his grandmother in a Kinloch plaid. “Ye’ll catch yer death.”
“Death,” she echoed. The keys hanging from the gold chain at her waist clanged like the tolling of a bell. “Death has come to Kinloch. . . . It’s a reckoning. A reckoning, I tell ye. . . .”
“Can you tell me who else was in the castle?” Euan asked hastily. Morag MacDougal in her prophetic mood was a bit much before breakfast.
Behind him, Beatrice the sheep bleated plaintively. Euan swatted her away before she could nose under his kilt.
In the distance, he could hear the sound of a siren: PC McMorris coming up from the village, bringing the medical examiner with her, and thank goodness for that. Euan wished he were wearing something more official and not the dress kilt and blazer he’d worn to the ceilidh the night before. Would it be sexist to send PC McMorris back to fetch him some trousers?
Before he could act on that thought, a commotion arose from above.
“We need to take a selfie!” an American voice trilled.
What the—
“Shove up, you’re blocking the way.” Three women tumbled down the stairs, shoving and elbowing one anothereach other, all talking at once. They came to an abrupt halt just shy of the landing, staring at Euan.
They all wore plaid, but in nothing resembling any tartan Euan had ever seen on Kinloch. Their jarring plaids were enough to give anyone a headache, much less a man who had been called out before he’d had a chance to go to bed, and was still feeling the effects of the fabled Kinloch punch.
One of them appeared to be wearing nothing at all underneath her plaid dressing gown.
He’d seen her at the ceilidh. Dancing. In skintight plaid.
Euan turned to Calum.
“What the devil are they doing here?”
Calum looked at him apologetically. “These’ll be the Amerrrrricans. The authors. Staying at the castle for the retreat.”
This was all the morning needed.
Americans. Why did it always have to be Americans?

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

There’s been a sensational murder at historic Castle Kinloch, a gothic fantasy of grey granite on a remote island in the Highlands of Scotland. Literary superstar Brett Saffron Presley has been found dead—under bizarre circumstances—in the castle tower’s book-lined study. Years ago, Presley purchased the castle as a showpiece for his brand and to lure paying guests with a taste for writerly glamour. Now it seems, the castle has done him in…or, possibly, one of the castle’s guests has. Detective Chief Inspector Euan McIntosh, a local with no love for literary Americans, finds himself with the unenviable task of extracting statements from three American lady novelists.

The prime suspects are Kat de Noir, a slinky erotica writer; Cassie Pringle, a Southern mom of six juggling multiple cozy mystery series; and Emma Endicott, a New England blue blood and author of critically acclaimed historical fiction. The women claim to be best friends writing a book together, but the authors’ stories about how they know Brett Saffron Presley don’t quite line up, and the detective is getting increasingly suspicious.

Why did the authors really come to Castle Kinloch? And what really happened the night of the great Kinloch ceilidh, when Brett Saffron Presley skipped the folk dancing for a rendezvous with death?

A crafty locked-room mystery, a pointed satire about the literary world, and a tale of unexpected friendship and romance—this novel has it all, as only three bestselling authors can tell it!
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Meet the Author:

Beatriz Williams is the bestselling author of over a dozen novels, including Husbands and Lovers, The Summer Wives, and The Secret Life of Violet Grant, as well as four other novels cowritten with Lauren Willig and Karen White. A native of Seattle, she graduated from Stanford University and earned an MBA in finance from Columbia University. She lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry.

Lauren Willig is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than twenty-five novels, including Band of Sisters and the RITA Award winning Pink Carnation series. An alumna of Yale University, she has a graduate degree in history from Harvard and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She lives in New York City with her husband, two young children, and vast quantities of coffee.

Karen White is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thirty-four novels, including The Last Night in London and The House on Prytania, as well as the Tradd Street mystery series. She currently writes what she refers to as “grit lit”—Southern women’s fiction. She is a graduate of the American School in London and has a BS in management from Tulane University. When not writing, she spends her time reading, singing, and avoiding cooking. She has two grown children and currently lives near Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband and a spoiled Havanese dog.
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