Walkies

Somebody saw to the dog. Nobody phoned for help. Ishbel Rintoul is seventy-one, widowed, and has the key to half the houses in Kinloch Crescent, a curve of Georgian elegance in Edinburgh's New Town. She walks other people's dogs. It gives her somewhere to be at half past seven, and a view of everybody's business the neighbours would rather she didn't have. Her favourite client is Mustard, a Dandie Dinmont with the dignity of a High Court judge. His owner, Lady Mackellar, is the most feared woman in the crescent: eighty-four, freshly ousted from the gardens committee, and rumoured to keep a book of every neighbour's secrets. On the first Monday in March, Ishbel lets herself in and finds Lady Mackellar at the foot of her stair. The police see a sad fall. But Mustard isn't desperate to go out. His pill has already been given. And his lead is on the wrong hook. With a detective sergeant who is terrified of dogs, a gardens convener with a freezer full of evidence, a retired advocate with a Newfoundland, and her best friend Ina, who drove the 23 bus for thirty years and trusts nobody, Ishbel has to find out who was walking Mustard in the dark. Walkies is the first Kinloch Crescent Mystery: a warm, funny, fairly clued Scottish cosy with an older sleuth, a lot of dogs and absolutely no gore. A traditional cosy mystery: no gore, no on-page violence, no explicit content.