Guest Post & #Giveaway – Murder in Vancouver 1886 by Marion Crook
Murder in Vancouver 1886
Historical Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Setting – Vancouver, BC, Canada
Publisher : Epicenter Press (WA) (May 14, 2024)
Paperback : 234 pages
Synopsis
Vancouver, 1886, a bustling city with a growing population and tantalizing opportunities. Some of those opportunities are illegal. When Amy MacDonald, the school teacher at Hastings Mill, discovers new Winchester ’86 rifles are being smuggled through the city, she tries to enlist the aid of the earnest but slow-witted provincial policeman. She involves a curious local newspaperman, a businessman, a knowledgeable woman of the street, and her irrepressible younger brother in her efforts to prevent the contraband from flowing to the Métis rebels in the North West.
Vancouver life is complicated by the murder of a Métis man, the persecution of the Chinese people living in the city and the intent of the mob to oust the Chinese onto boats and out of the new city. Amy manages to move between different the levels of society but not without risk of being dismissed from her teaching position. She tries to do what she believe is morally right without being discovered. All her plans and careful stratagems are disrupted suddenly and dramatically by the devastating, overwhelming fire.
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Guest Post
My name is Lydia Smith. I was born Lydia MacGilvray and I changed that when I married Allistair Smith. I should have kept it because Allistair left me one day when I was thirty and I haven’t seen him since. Not that I miss him. It was time he went.
I came out from the east with my niece, Amy MacDonald, who is the school teacher here in Vancouver—well, rightly Hastings Mill at the edge of Vancouver. I look after her and her brother Stanley. He’s fifteen and hard on clothes. He also eats as if we were all going to starve tomorrow. I’m still married to Allistair, but I have no idea where he is. Being married without a husband is a status that suits me. I am not a derided spinster, or a widow who is subject to the attentions of the desperate, female-deprived men in this town. No matter how long in the tooth you are, and I’m thrifty-four so indeed, old for marriage, some men will pester you. But a married woman is left alone. Suits me.
I’m enjoying watching Amy’s love life. She has no idea that those two men who visit her are vying for her favour. She has a notion that Hartman is serious about her, but I doubt she has noticed Robert is also an admirer. At the moment, she doesn’t seem to want to encourage either of them. Amy is usually socially circumspect, but she takes risks. She’s teaching a Chinese boy English here at the house. He comes after Amy gets home from school. If she’s caught doing that, she could get fired. That’s ne thing. The other is that she’s learning to swim. She sneaks off to the bay early in the morning and practises staying afloat. Women don’t do that here. Stanley and I keep her secret, but I don’t approve of a lot she does.
Some of her friends are not of the best society, although I admit that madam she knows is entertaining. Amy tells me Vancouver is different from eastern Canada, and I shouldn’t be so straight-laced. I didn’t think I was. She’s careful, I’ll give her that, but she’s going to get into trouble sooner than later. What with smuggled guns, rebellion in the offing and a riot against the Chinese, she’ll likely get caught in it all. She’s a worry.
About the Author
Marion Crook wrote mysteries: The Susan George Mysteries for young adult readers and The Megan Mysteries for middle-grade readers. Recently, she produced The British Book Tour Mysteries (Camel Press), writing under the name Emma Dakin. Shadows in Sussex (Book 5) was released in 2023. Storms in the Cotswolds (Book 6) is scheduled for September 2024. As Marion McKinnon Crook, she wrote non-fiction history Always Pack a Candle: A Nurse in the Cariboo-Chilcotin. 2022 (Heritage House Publishing) which won The Lieutenant Governor’s Community History Award. A sequel Always on Call: Adventures in Nursing, Ranching and Rural Living hit the BC Bestsellers list in its first week of release. Her interest in the Victorian era took her to research 1886 in Vancouver, Canada. Hours of reading old newspapers accounts of life in that new city, and checking archives combined with her fascination with the mystery genre produce Murder in Vancouver 1886. Marion Crook lives near the Pacific Ocean in Gibsons, BC.
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