Ciao Team Dusty!

Don’t you love that word ‘halcyon’? My new address has the word ‘halcyon’ (HAL-see-uhn) in it. It’s a word I’ve always liked. The dictionary meaning is ‘very happy and successful’ or ‘calm, peaceful, and happy’. But there is much more to this word.

Continue reading: mailchi.mp/3c2ca7877fd9/do-you-know-what-a-halcyon-is-what-about-australias-very-own-halcyon

In 2016, on a research trip for Rippling Red, Team Dusty was lucky enough to be in Darwin on Cracker Night, the night when Territorians go wild with fireworks to celebrate Territory Day.

That evening, after enjoying a meal and a drink or two at the casino, we headed back to our accommodation to watch the fireworks displays. Guess who was waiting at the hop-on hop-off bus stop? None other than the award-winning British actor Bill Nighy! We were gobsmacked. What was he doing in Darwin? Why was he travelling on a bus?

Eventually, we realised the bus passenger was not Bill Nighy but a look alike. He was the spitting image of the genuine article. But it belatedly dawned on us that ‘our’ Mr Nighy was too short to be the real deal.  He was around 5’6” while Bill Nighy is just over six feet. Dead giveaway, right? Even after drinks at the casino, we should have spotted the difference straight away. Duh.

Out on the balcony at our hotel, watching the rockets of colour whistling through the air to light up the night sky, I was reminded of the fireworks scene in Agatha Christie’s story Peril at End House. Unfortunately for one of the characters, the ‘fireworks popping and the squibs going off’ provided cover for a murder to take place.

This was not the case in Rippling Red. Dusty and Sean enjoyed the pungent aroma of spices from a home-cooked Indian meal while watching brilliant balls of colour exploding into the air. The murder they were investigating was another cold case Dusty was determined to solve.

Until next time. JB & Brigid George

Image:https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-10(Supplied:HC Blechynden)

I was looking forward to visiting the extraordinary Jenolan Caves in New South Wales with Team Dusty to research the area for Dusty Kent Murder Mystery #8. However, it was not to be. The entire visitor precinct closed in 2019 due to severe weather damage and won’t reopen until next year. For the first time in the writing of these mysteries, Brigid George has had to make do with remote researching of the setting.

In Dusty Kent #8 (as yet untitled and unpublished) Sean and Dusty travel to the caves–the oldest cave system in the world at 340 million years old. When she first sees the four-storey complex of Jenolan Caves House with its gables, tiled roofs and multi-paned windows, Dusty exclaims, “It’s like a storybook house!” She did not know then that ghosts loitered in the storybook house.

And so it was in Agatha Christie’s short story Philomel Cottage, the main character was captivated by an isolated, dream-like country home, exquisite with its old-world charm. She did not know it was hiding a terrifying dark reality and shadows from the past. Dusty also experiences ‘the ghosts of years past’ in the spirits that accompany her on her morning walk and the ghosts of past employees that haunt the hotel.

Spirits of the dead have featured in previous Dusty Kent investigations such as the doomed princess of the yellow hibiscus flower in Disguising Demons, but the Jenolan Caves simply teem with ghosts and apparitions.

One setback after another has interrupted my writing of this mystery, which I began during my Covid isolation, but the light at the end of the tunnel is finally starting to shine.

Image: www.jenolancaves.org.au