We’re back at the Last Ditch Motel and it’s going into lockdown! The Motel is opening it’s door to vulnerable people and spouses of medical professionals then promptly closing them again while this big thing works itself out. It’s only for a couple of weeks right it’ll be fine. The only thing to worry about is boredom right? Too bad there’s not a case to work on… oh wait!
Abusive banners start being left hanging in the fence for one of the new residents and shortly after one of them goes missing leaving her kids behind without a word and with a room covered in blood. Lexy and gang are on it. It’s also handy that Detective Molly is on sight until she starts interrogating all of them.
This is all the fun I expect from the Last Ditch gang, the mystery wasn’t too complex but I’m really here for the bants anyway. Lexy baffling Americans with Scottish colloquialisms never gets tired. It’s also interesting to see how authors are incorporating Covid into there work. It was fun to use a classic mystery structure (group of isolated people trapped with a murder) and apply it to current conditions. COVID is the new blizzard.

I love Catriona McPherson's Dandy Gilver series set in the 1920s in Scotland but I have avoided these because the covers have tartan edges and I have learned to avoid romances where the cover features kilts and/or tartan. Big mistake, huge!

The permanent residents of the last Ditch Motel are a motley crew: the motel is run by a lesbian couple, one of whom is a germaphobe; there are a couple of gay doctors, one of whom is terrified of creepy-crawlies and is therefore on extended medical leave; and there's a single mother and her new (much younger) husband and son.

As California is on the verge of shutting down due to Covid-19 Lexy comes up with Operation Cocker to fill the vacant rooms at the motel with the vulnerable and families of first responders so that they can't be forced to take in strangers, and then lock down as Kathi's germaphobia is reaching dangerous levels. Two of the newcomers are escaping abusive partners and when vague but threatening messages are left draped over the fence the gang aren't sure which spouse is responsible. Reporting the messages to the local police, in the form of Detective Molly, leads nowhere, until another incomer, a doctor's wife, goes missing, leaving behind her two small children, and the place is bathed in blood.

Can Lexy and the gang uncover who killed her?

This is the fourth book in a series set in the Last Ditch Motel, featuring Dundee-born therapist Lexy Campbell. The blurb suggests it would suit fans of Janet Evanovich and I can see the similarities with Janet's early books, before they became repetitive. I loved it but I can see other people might find the humour a bit grating. Basically, there is a lot of humour gained from the fact that Lexy is from Scotland and so she shares a language but not a vocabulary with the other guests.

Anyway, I found it high-octane, funny and great fun. Having read this I have already purchased the first two books in the series, read the first and I halfway through the second.

Very different to Dandy, but enjoyable nonetheless.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.