Today at Celtic Connexions, I’m sharing an excerpt from Caron Allan’s latest novel, Through Dancing Poppies, a cozy mystery set in the 1960s.
Blurb
Through Dancing Poppies: Miss Gascoigne mysteries book 3: an intriguing cosy mystery set in the swinging 1960s
Poppy Bell is a teenage singing sensation about to ‘hit the big time’ and newly engaged to a man old enough to be her father. Everyone says she’s a gold digger. But then…
Dee Gascoigne, now a fully-fledged—or nearly fully-fledged—private investigator working for the law firm of Montague Montague, meets Poppy a couple of times and can’t help but notice she is a very talented musician who is young, naive and on the brink of something incredible. But she is also surrounded by people who know exactly what they are doing, they’ve done this kind of thing before, are used to the spotlight and the glare of media sensationalism, and know how to present the perfect image to grow a very public career. Then there’s a near miss in a car park, and suddenly Dee has an intense feeling of danger lurking in the shadows. But who is the target? Poppy or her new fiancé, wealthy entrepreneur Teddy Reynolds?
Buy Link
KINDLE EDITION https://www.amazon.co.uk/Through-Dancing-Poppies-Gascoigne-intriguing-ebook/dp/B0G3JPXG4Y
Excerpt
Prologue
June 1965
The spotlight picked out a plain wooden chair, and beside it, a microphone on its stand. Beyond that soft pool of illumination, the stage was in darkness. There came the sound of eager footsteps, then a young woman, barely more than a girl, stepped
into the halo of light and sat down, settling herself on the chair with a guitar on her knee.
The guitar seemed far too big for her, but she hugged her thin arms about it, leaning her cheek forward to rest on the curve of the honey-coloured wood. As she did so, her hair fell forward, a smooth shining wall between her and the camera.
From this angle all that could be seen was the hair, softly golden, her right cheek, and a half-closed eye fringed by thick fair lashes.
‘And what’s your name, sweetheart?’ The man in the front row called to her.
‘Poppy.’
He put a tick next to her name on his list. ‘Right then, sweetheart, when you’re ready…’
She began to strum the guitar, and after a few bars, still in that pensive, almost meditative pose, she began to sing.
It was an old song, old before her grandmother was born, let alone her mother. A song of wistful remembrance of a brief love now lost. A song to give the listener goosebumps.
For two and a half minutes the girl sang her song. Only her hands and her mouth moved, the rest of her might have been carved from marble. There was not a sound in the studio. The camera remained fixed on her, neither panning out for a wide shot, nor closing in to intrude upon her face. At the end of the two and a half minutes, she
stopped the song on a softly held note, her fingers stilling at the strings of her guitar.
Silence surrounded her.
When the man’s voice spoke again, she lifted her head.
‘Well, Poppy my dear, that was very nice. Very nice indeed. Perhaps you’ll go back outside and wait to have a chat with us in a few minutes?’
She nodded, picked up her guitar, and returned to the corridor.
‘Well?’ The man turned to someone near him, someone who had been silent so far. ‘What do you think?’
‘Just what we are looking for, I should say.’ The second man paused then added, ‘Of course those awful trousers will have to go. And is that a man’s sweater she’s got on?’
‘Looked like it. I’m thinking one of those little white frocks. Keep the makeup and hair simple, we go for the ingenue look. The audiences lap that up. She looks very young, though. She is eighteen, I take it?’
‘Not quite. Not for another eight months, from what it says here.’
‘Hmm. Well, if you don’t say anything, I won’t. We might even save ourselves some money. Right, are there any more?’
‘No, she was the last.’
‘And the best, I reckon. This is the break I’ve been waiting for. We could hit the jackpot with this one.’
‘I’d say so.’
‘Just follow my lead, won’t you? Go along with anything I say.’
‘Don’t I always? Hey, Dave, turn that camera off now. We’ve finished.’
‘Yes, Mr Reynolds,’ called Dave, and he turned off the camera, then the microphones.
About the Author
Caron lives in Derbyshire, England, where Jane Austen’s Mr Darcy came from. She hasn’t met him yet, but nevertheless clings to the dream. She writes mysteries and crime but sometimes adds in a little dash of romance or fantasy.
Like many writers, Caron always wanted to write stories. She can remember announcing this to her mother when she was eight years old. Caron says, ‘I seem to remember she wasn’t overly impressed.’
Caron started reading adventure stories and mysteries for children when she was around 7 or 8 and graduated to Agatha Christie and Patricia Wentworth (her faves) when around 9 or 10. She has never looked back.
Caron has tried writing literary fiction – she was terrible at it. She has tried writing romance but got bored and killed everyone off. So now she sticks to what she loves – murder mysteries. The Dottie Manderson mysteries are set in the 1930s and feature a terminally-nosy well-to-do young woman, the Miss Gascoigne mysteries are set in the 1960s and a spin-off from the Dottie books, and the Friendship Can Be Murder series are set ‘now’ and written as diary entries by a posh woman, Cressida Barker-Powell, who plans to make the world a better place by getting rid of bad people, starting with her mother-in-law.
https://caronallanfiction.com
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This book started as a slow burn for me, but I was soon wrapped up in the story. Adam has gone to France to find his wife, who disappeared a few years ago. Her daughter, Abigail, arrives to help with the search. Add in a few good friends, some mysterious characters from Maryanne and Abigail’s past, and things become twisted.
