The Last Ditch Motel mysteries

Pregnant and a week overdue, Lexy Campbell’s hope for a quiet Burns’ Supper at the Cuento Celtic Society is dashed in minutes. The haggis is ceremonial only, the actual dinner is chicken (!), and then the haggis cutter’s missing dirk turns up in the back of a dead guest no one can identify—because of course it does.

With a room full of potential suspects, and contractions potentially minutes away, Lexy and the rest of Trinity for Trouble must untangle a mystery involving old grudges, family feuds, and some very convincing magical misdirection.

But as the trio race to uncover a killer, Lexy’s running out of patience, time, and possibly all dignity.

"A brisk, clever whodunit that bubbles with banter" KIRKUS

It’s egg-hunt season, but Lexy Campbell is 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?

Lexy Campbell is getting married! But in the six months of planning it took to arrive at the big day, she has become . . . a challenge. Friendships are strained to breaking point, Lexy’s parents are tiptoeing around her, and even Taylor, her intended, must be having second thoughts. Turns out it’s moot. Before the happy couple can exchange vows, Sister Sunshine, the wedding celebrant, is discovered dead behind the cake, strangled with the fairy lights. Lexy’s dream wedding is now not just a nightmare: it’s a crime scene. 

Lexy Campbell is long overdue a trip to Scotland to see her parents, and an unexpected death in the extended Last Ditch Motel family makes Christmas in a bungalow in Dundee with nine others seem almost irresistible.

But when Lexy and the Last Ditch crew hop across the Atlantic, there’s been a change of plan and they’re whisked off to Mistletoe Hall in the pretty village of Yule, where the surprises continue. The news that a man disappeared from the crumbling pile sixty years ago, along with an unsettling discovery in the bricked-up basement, means that Todd, Kathi and Lexy – Trinity for Trouble – must solve another murder.

Deadly secrets, berry rustlers, skeletons and a snowy Christmas Eve in the booze aisle at Tesco: the Last Ditch crew won’t forget their Scottish holiday in a hurry!

A mysterious object the size of a suitcase, all wrapped in bacon and smelling of syrup, can mean only one thing: Thanksgiving at the Last Ditch Motel. This year the motel residents are in extra-celebratory mood as the holiday brings a new arrival to the group – a bouncing baby girl.  But as one life enters the Ditch, another leaves it . . . 

And so begins a long week of leftovers and murder.

March 2020 and Operation Cocker is a go! The owners of the Last Ditch Motel, with a little help from their friend Lexy Campbell, are  preparing to support one another through the oncoming lockdown, offering the motel’s spare rooms to a select few from the local area in need of sanctuary . . .

A community is devastated when the bronze statue of local legend Mama Cuento is stolen on Valentine’s Day. When Lexy Campbell arrives on the scene, a big bronze toe is found along with a ransom note – “Listen to our demands or you will never see her again. There are nine more where this came from” . . . 

Lexy sails again! Happily moored in her houseboat in the slough behind the Last Ditch Motel, Lexy Campbell wants only to build her counselling practice, avoid her mother's phone calls and - who knows? - meet a nice guy. But when she throws a Halloween bash for her motely crew of motel pals, the only single guy at the party is too old for her, too tightly wrapped round the seventy-two pack of Blue Moon chilling in the slough and . . . well,  yes . . . too dead.

​Lexy Campbell fell in love and left her native Scotland for a golden life in California – hitched to a hunk, building her marriage counselling practice, living the dream. Six months later she’s divorced, broke and headed home. There’s just one last thing. Lexy’s only client – sweet little old Mrs Bombaro – is in jail for murdering her husband and Lexy knows the cops have got it wrong . . .