Book Review & Giveaway: A Wee Murder in My Shop by Fran Stewart

About the book: Hamelin, Vermont, isn’t the most likely place for bagpipes and tartan, but at Peggy Winn’s ScotShop, business is booming…

While on a transatlantic hunt for some authentic wares to sell at her shop, Peggy is looking to forget her troubles by digging through the hidden treasures of the Scottish Highlands. With so many enchanting items on sale, Peggy can’t resist buying a beautiful old tartan shawl. But once she wraps it around her shoulders, she discovers that her purchase comes with a hidden fee: the specter of a fourteenth-century Scotsman.

Unsure if her Highland fling was real or a product of an overactive imagination, Peggy returns home to Vermont—only to find the dead body of her ex-boyfriend on the floor of her shop. When the police chief arrests Peggy’s cousin based on some incriminating evidence, Peggy decides to ask her haunting Scottish companion to help figure out who really committed the crime—before anyone else gets kilt…

Not many cozies are set in Vermont, so that's the first thing that really appealed to me about this book. Set in the fictional town of Hamelin, Vermont, Peggy Winn is the owner of ScotShop which specializes in all things Scottish. Following the discovery that her boyfriend and friend are having an affair, she goes on a buying trip to the Scottish Highlands. She stops at a little giftshop she's never noticed before, and can't resist buying a beautiful old shawl. Little does she know that the shawl contains the ghost of a 14th century Scotsman who ends up following her back home to the States. (The shawl previously belonged to his beloved and he is still grieving for her.) Upon her arrival back home, Peggy discovers that her cheating ex-boyfriend has been murdered in her shop, and her cousin is arrested for the crime. With only an extremely cryptic note in his pocket, Peggy teams up with her ghost and a lawman to catch a killer.

From Paige Shelton's Country Cooking School mysteries to JJ Cook's Sweet Pepper Fire Brigade mysteries, I adore books that feature a "love story" between a ghost and a living person, and this debut is no exception. Scottish historicals and time travel romances are extremely popular right now, and I can easily see this book appealing to readers of those genres. The scenes where Peggy is trying to talk to her ghost and carry on a real-life conversation at the same time are very entertaining and humorous. With a limited cast of secondary characters, one would think pin-pointing the killer would be easy, but I found the opposite to be true...it was harder! I was stumped until the final revelation.

Really my only issue is that in spite of the book seeming a bit tedious at times, I felt that the ending was rushed. Various loose ends, particularly surrounding the ScotShop's assistant manager Gilda's mysterious "migraines" left me intrigued, and will definitely have me picking up the second book in the series hoping that some of my questions will be answered. In the meantime I'll be left wondering why Dirk the ghost attracts spiders to him like bees to honey...

Feline trivia: Fran Stewart is also the author of a series of cat cozies, the Biscuit McKee Mysteries.

Giveaway: Leave a comment by noon eastern on Friday, March 13th, for your chance to win a copy of A Wee Murder in My Shop. (US entries only, please.)