Deadly Dram: A Whisky Business Mystery
Cozy Mystery
3rd in Series
Alibi (September 4, 2018)
Print Length 300 pages

Synopsis

Distillery owner Abigail Logan discovers that high spirits are no match for a cold-blooded killer as the Whisky Business Mystery series puts a fatal twist on stiff competition.

It’s been a year since globe-trotting photojournalist Abi Logan inherited Abbey Glen, a whisky distillery in the heart of the Scottish countryside. To her surprise, the village of Balfour already feels like home, and her new business partner, Grant MacEwan, continues to be too charming to resist. But Abi has a history of relationship disasters, so she struggles to avoid an ill-fated romance with Grant. Steering clear is hard enough on a day-to-day basis, but when the two head off to a whisky industry competition together, Abi panics. Five-star resort, four glorious days of nonstop whisky tasting, and a fatally attractive Scotsman—what could possibly go wrong?

The night before the award presentations, with foreign and domestic whisky makers at one anothers’ throats, two judges are found dead under mysterious circumstances. What started with three dream-come-true nominations for Abby Glen’s whisky soon turns into a nightmare for Abi. With a killer on the loose, she must call on her investigative skills to stop another murder—before she gets taken out of the running herself.

Guest Post

The classic advice given to any aspiring writers is to “write what you know,” so many people ask me why my protagonist is a journalist and not a lawyer. After all, I spent a large part of my professional life as a lawyer. Honestly, unless you are John Grisham, being a lawyer is just not that riveting and I wanted my protagonist to be interesting. A woman of substance and a woman who already had the tools she needed to be a successful amateur sleuth, as well as a business woman/distillery owner.

As a photojournalist, Abi Logan has a strong instinct about people and a compulsive attention to detail that serve her well as she investigates. Abi also needed to have had some experience in a male dominated profession before coming to Scotland. Being a former war correspondent she’d experienced that, along with a lot of pain and death and it left her a bit world-weary. Ready for a new challenge and a change of lifestyle. That resonated with me as I switched careers mid-stream and I hope it resonates with many of my readers as well.

Fraught relations between men and woman in the workplace have become such a hot topic lately. The death threats Abi gets in book one of the Whisky Business series go to the extreme, but many of my readers have seen discrimination, suspicion, and mistrust at work, especially if they work in a traditionally male arena. I experienced this as a lawyer, and Abi certainly would have seen it as a war correspondent, and now she’s experiencing it again as she finds her way in the whisky business.

The whisky fraternity, or the Barley Boys as Abi calls them, don’t always welcome her with open arms. The majority of owners and distillers in the whisky business both in Scotland and in other parts of the world are men. Women are slowly making their way into the profession, but they are still a comparative rarity. In these stories, Abi is one of the first, but she is lucky to have a few enlightened souls around her that are willing to recognize the historic contributions of women and to recount their stories. Abi finds strength in the stories they share about the women that came before her.

Back in the 1800’s when small-scale whisky distillation was still illegal, many women tended the stills while their husbands worked the land. Helen Cummings famously disguised the family distillery as a bakery and would serve the revenuers tea and cakes in her kitchen while secretly raising a red flag on the top of the farmhouse to let other distillers in the area know that the authorities were around. Helen and her daughter-in-law Elizabeth shepherded their distillery, now known as Cardhu, from its early illicit operations through several legal expansions and eventually crafted a very lucrative deal to sell the business to Johnnie Walker.

In the early 1930’s Bessie Williamson rose from secretary, to distillery manager, to owner of Laphroaig distillery, earning the title Mother of Laphroaig along the way. By the second World War the supplies of barley used to make whisky were desperately needed to feed the Scottish people and whisky production was put on hold by the government for nearly two years, but the women on the home front still managed to find enough barley going spare to produce a stock of whisky to tide the locals through the dark, dry days.

Today, more and more women like Abi Logan are making their way into the whisky business both in Scotland and abroad. As a woman and a whisky lover I’m having a great time watching them find their wings. Look for profiles of these special ladies on my social media sites. The times are changing and it’s great to be a part of them.

About the Author

Melinda Mullet was born in Dallas and attended school in Texas, Washington D.C., England, and Austria. She spent many years as a practicing attorney before pursuing a career as a writer. Author of the Whisky Business Mystery series, Mullet is a passionate supporter of childhood literacy. She works with numerous domestic and international charities striving to promote functional literacy for all children. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her family.

Website * Facebook * Twitter

Giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway