Doogie O'Mara, a young Scottish veterinary student, applies for a gap-year job as a tour rep in Africa, where he also hopes to find time to study the wildlife. Instead, he finds himself on Mallorca, thrust in at the deep end of the madcap package tour business. Gannets are the only form of wildlife encountered. But these aren't the sort of birds he can treat. These are laden with fun-seeking holidaymakers!
Working undercover on a cruise liner bound for the Canary Islands, Bob and his two sidekicks have plenty to cope with. The discovery of a severed finger in a passenger's quiche lorraine sparks an investigation full of greed, guile, deceit and double-dealing. Does the finger belong to an alleged man-overboard victim? Was the man-overboard victim pushed, or did he commit suicide? Is it all just a cleverly engineered insurance scam?
When the sleepy Scottish village of Cuddyford is colonised by well-heeled retirees and big-city commuters, Jigger McCloud, a Jack-the-lad local with an eye for the ladies, isn't slow to make a quick buck at their expense. Life seems rosy for Jigger and his odd-but-loveable family, until he tries to scam a mysterious foreign millionaire, who arrives on the scene with plans to develop the area in unappealing ways.
Having battled and succumbed to the manana pace of rural Mallorca, spring sees Peter Kerr and family relaxing into a supposedly simpler way of life, growing oranges on their little valley farm, Ca's Mayoral. However, even after the trials, tribulations and triumphs of their initiation, Spain has not yet finished with them.
It's the stuff of dreams. A Scottish family giving up relative sanity and security to go and grow oranges for a living in a secluded valley in the mountains of the Mediterranean island of Mallorca.
Julie Bryson and rookie detective, Andy Green, once again aid Scottish detective Bob Burns. When Andy becomes the unwitting recipient of a drop of £100,000 in used notes, the trio become enmeshed in a web of murder, intrigue, and Caledonian skulduggery, as the action shifts to Sicily, New York, and a remote Hebridean island. The arrival of a Sicilian blacksmith as the island's new laird leads to some hilarious misunderstandings as the line between the good and bad guys becomes increasingly blurred.
Bob Burns is an old-fashioned kind of Scottish sleuth, more interested in catching villains than promotions. But when his enquiries into a murder are blocked by his bosses, he wonders if he should risk losing his career by carrying on his investigation. Encouraged by an attractive, maverick forensic scientist, and assisted by a keener-than-bright young constable, Bob does it his way. The trail leads them from Scotland to Mallorca, where intrigue and mayhem mingle with the crowds at a fishermen's fiesta.
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