The Snow Job (Century Cottage Cozy Mysteries)
by Dianne Ascroft
About The Snow Job
The Snow Job (Century Cottage Cozy Mysteries)
Cozy Mystery
3rd in Series
Setting – Fenwater, a fictional small town in the province of Ontario in Canada during the early 1980s.
Independently Published (December 13, 2023)
Paperback : 310 pages
ISBN-13 : 979-8871249321
Digital ASIN : B0CQ3DJL3F
A Scottish shindig, a pretty pin, a cold corpse. When a well-liked and respected townsman is murdered on a snowy street in Fenwater, it’s up to Lois Stone to sift through a multitude of motives to find the killer.
Middle-aged widow Lois is beginning to feel part of the Fenwater community, and as winter sets in, she is getting ready for the town’s biggest Scottish event, the annual Burns Night supper. But when one of the committee members dies in suspicious circumstances, Lois has more to worry about than the fate of this year’s celebration. She tried unsuccessfully to revive the man and her friend Marge worked with him. So, they want to find his killer even though Lois promised her partner Bruce that she would stay out of police matters. But, what’s the harm in asking a few questions? Such as does someone want to safeguard their inheritance or give their business a boost? Will finding the motive for the murder lead them to the killer or maybe more?
And so begins a fortnight of slippery sidewalks, angst about ancestors, capable firemen and cunning firebugs, unreliable records, swirling Scottish music and swinging tartan kilts, calico cats and smouldering spooks set against the backdrop of snow glistening under streetlamps on serene streets, the comfort of ritual in a cold churchyard, the swish of skate blades in crisp night air and the tang of mouthwatering meatloaf in rural Canada in 1984.
The Century Cottage Mystery series is mainly set in rural Ontario, Canada during the early 1980s.
A tale for fans of Cindy Bell, Leighann Dobbs, Dianne Harman and Kathi Daley.
GUEST POST
Meet My Main Characters
by Dianne Ascroft
When I started writing the Century Cottage Cozy Mysteries series, I wanted to create heartwarming stories set in a fictional small town in Canada. I’m not interested in writing larger-than-life blockbusters with huge casts of characters and lots of flashy settings. I like to zero in close to tell stories about a small place with characters that live relatively ordinary lives. My characters should touch readers’ hearts so they will want to root for them.
The Century Cottage Cozy Mysteries series revolves around a tight-knit bunch of friends. Lois Stone is at the centre of the group and she is definitely one of my favourite characters. A middle-aged widow, she has moved from the big city and is trying to adjust to life on her own in an historical “century cottage” with her two calico cats. She is quiet, dependable and trustworthy with firm standards. I wanted her to be believable: someone readers will like and relate to. Her struggle with grief after the death of her husband, and her determination not to retreat from life, despite her sadness and inherent shyness, are challenges that I think will resonate with many readers. Although she is quiet, she has a dry sense of humour, and her caring nature shines through her somewhat muted exterior. As she settles into her new life, her tranquility is often rocked by adventures and mysteries that she can’t ignore because her friend Marge won’t let her.
Marge Kirkwood is Lois’s closest friend and the complete opposite to Lois: outspoken, confident and extroverted. She’s the archivist at the local museum and she met Lois when they worked together at a Toronto library. They have been friends for years. The women now live a couple of blocks from each other, on the same street, in the fictional small town, Fenwater. Marge, a middle-aged divorcee, has returned to Fenwater, her home town, to keep an eye on her elderly mother, but she hasn’t settled down to a quiet life. She’s a dyed-blonde social butterfly and everyone in town knows and likes her. Marge supports Lois and makes sure that her friend doesn’t retreat from life now that she’s on her own. She provides Lois with a shoulder to cry on and is a rock to steady her in a crisis. She also ensures that Lois’s life is never dull though her friend often wonders whether this is a blessing or a curse. Marge can’t curb her curiosity and this frequently compels her to snoop into police investigations. When trouble finds the pair, it is usually due to something Marge has done.
Bruce Murray has known Marge since they were youngsters. The carpenter does furniture and house restoration work and has his own workshop beside his old farmhouse a short distance outside the town. In the first book in the series, A Timeless Celebration, Marge ropes him in on several occasions to use his carpentry skills to help Lois. After spending time with Bruce and getting to know him, Lois also forges a friendship with him. Although she is still dealing with her grief after the death of her husband, she finds Bruce’s softspoken manner and easy-going nature comfortable to be around. She comes to trust him and their friendship gradually grows into something more. Since Bruce isn’t one to say much, readers don’t always know what he’s thinking, but we do know that whatever he does, he always has Lois’s best interests at heart. The one subject that he is outspoken about is the women’s involvement in criminal investigations: he tries to discourage Lois from probing into them. He worries about the scrapes that the women get into because he couldn’t stand it if Lois got hurt. Nevertheless, Lois and Marge can count on him, and he has stepped in to help them catch criminals a time or two.
After this brief introduction to my main characters, I hope Lois, Marge and Bruce seem as real to you as they do to me. But, you might still wonder where they came from. In many ways, though not entirely, Lois Stone is like me. After years of doing detailed historical research for my previous historical fiction series, I decided that this cozy mystery series wouldn’t involve a huge amount of research. So, when I created Lois, I deliberately used some of my own traits, and likes and dislikes to bring her to life. That made it easy for me to make her believable, and since she has so much in common with me, we ‘hit it off’ and are great friends.
The rest of the characters in the series sort of popped out of my head to complement Lois and help me tell the stories. Some of their characteristics and quirks are inspired by real people but mostly they escaped from my imagination and are now running free to do whatever they please.
Marge was a fun character to create. Firstly, I wanted her to be the opposite of Lois in personality and looks to create some dramatic scenes and humorous moments in the stories as well as possible tensions between the two women. Marge is very loosely based on one of my mother’s good friends, who is one of the gutsiest women I’ve ever known. She’s not as brash as Marge, but she has a strong sense of fairness and justice, and she’s not afraid to enjoy life.
When I began to imagine the character who would be Lois’s romantic interest, I saw someone who was a mix of a middle-aged Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood. Bruce is tall and lean, with warm brown eyes and straight sandy hair. He has quiet self-assurance but is also friendly and approachable. To be Lois’s partner, he had to be competent, dependable and trustworthy. Bruce is a man of few words but we learn more about him in each novel.
I hope you have enjoyed meeting the main cast of Century Cottage Cozy mysteries. We hope you will join us in the books.
About Dianne Ascroft
Dianne Ascroft writes the Century Cottage Cozy Mysteries, set in rural Canada, and The Yankee Years historical sagas, set in WWII Northern Ireland. She has a passion for Ireland and Canada, past and present. An ex-pat Canadian, Dianne lives on a small farm with her husband and an assortment of strong-willed animals.
Her previous fiction works include An Unbidden Visitor (a tale inspired by Fermanagh’s famous Coonian ghost); Dancing Shadows, Tramping Hooves: A Collection of Short Stories (contemporary tales), and an historical novel, Hitler and Mars Bars, which explores Operation Shamrock, a little known Irish Red Cross humanitarian endeavor.
Author Links
Website: http://www.dianneascroft.com
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/DianneAscroftwriter/
Twitter/X: @DianneAscroft
Newsletter: https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/y1k5c3
Purchase Links: Books2Read Amazon
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Ruff Drafts 
Thanks for letting me visit your blog, Debbie. I hope you and your readers enjoyed meeting Lois and the gang. Maybe some of you will drop in and see them again in one of my Century Cottage Cozy Mysteries.
Dianne Ascroft
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