Death At a Scottish Halloween
Book 5 of the Scottish Isle Mysteries
Lucy Connelly
Crooked Lane Books
August 2026
Death At a Scottish Halloween by Lucy Connelly is a cozy mystery with a story that has multiple suspects. This is the fifth book in the series and to better understand the characters readers should probably read the books in order.
“I had been talking to my agent about doing something overseas, and then COVID hit. and I wanted to be anywhere but here. During COVID, I had done a DNA test for my doctor and found out that I was about 48% Scottish. As I was doing all kinds of research on Scotland, this idea came to me out of the blue as my ideas do. I had an emergency doctor who wants to chuck it all in America and move to a small town in Scotland and be a family doctor. She starts out in Seattle as an emergency room doctor over the whole department, which was a very stressful job, as you might imagine. And she needed a fresh start for reasons I won’t go into because it comes out in that first book. That’s how it all started, with COVID and the need to want to be anywhere but stuck in the house.”
It’s the week of Halloween—or as they say in Scotland, All Hallows’ Eve—and the town of Sea Isle is full of spooky celebrations. Dr. Emilia McRoy loves being part of her new community and is eager to help in any way she can. She and her assistant, Abigail, have decorated a room in the town’s All Hallow’s Eve haunted house as a bloody clinic. But the festivities are interrupted when she and her assistant, Abigail, find a dead body in the haunted house, a man named Duncan.
“Halloween a big role. It’s almost a character in the story, with different sort of Halloween celebrations that go along with that time of year, the harvest and all of that. It is a big part of the story and adds to the spookiness. The doctor is the main character, Emilia, and she has an assistant, Abigail. The story is set in a small Scottish town that sometimes gets closed off from the bigger cities. The local doctor would have to be able to do a lot of everything, which is why I made her an emergency doctor. As far as her getting involved in the crimes, I just thought it was a funny little twist where she had to be a medical examiner. I played a little bit of fun, literary wise with the town not really having coroners and she is insanely curious about how these people died and what happened. And it’s not so easy working with the police at the beginning, but as the series goes on, they learn to trust one another.”
As the team investigates, Dr. Em heads home the next night, escorted by baker pal Jasper only to find another man curled up dead on her doorstep, also named Duncan. Emilia, Abigail, and some of the town patrons join up with the Constable Ewan to determine who is the killer and what is the motive.
“He is a constable, also the mayor and the lord of the town. He owns most of the town. The town is his family. At first the relationship between Ewan and Emilia is a bit contentious, although he’s the one that wanted her there. It’s a little contentious because she starts evolving herself in the mystery, and he wants to keep her safe. He needs the doctor safe. And the more involved she gets, especially in those early books, the more danger she’s in. It’s a slow burn romance. As the relationship grows, they learn to trust one another.”
Readers will have a hard time guessing who is the murderer because of the many twists and turns.
