The Jenny McNair Mysteries Series

Against the backdrop of Scottish pubs, ferry boat rides, Puget Sound Islands, lawyer bashes, elegant fundraisers, and lavish funerals laden with coffee bars, Jenny McNair Campbell unravels the truth of Amy Morrison's life as well as her death. She also realizes some truths about her own life. In the first book in the Jenny McNair Mystery Series, Unlawful Alliances, Jenny's father, Charlie McNair--Scotsman, trumpet player, professor, ladies' man, and private detective--involves Jenny in yet another of his cases of the unfaithful spouse. Her world is turned inside out as she spies on members and family members of her own husband's law firm. When the subject of the investigation, Amy Morrison, drowns in her hot tub, Jenny's father wants her off the case, but she refuses to quit. She was, after all, aside from Amy's murderer, the last person to see Amy alive.

The second book in the Jenny McNair Mystery Series, Winnie's Web, begins when Jenny McNair Campbell, reluctant assistant to her detective father, moves into the craftsman cottage that she has inherited from her beloved bohemian great aunt, Winnie. The day she arrives in her new home on beautiful Anamcara Island in the Pacific Northwest, Jenny digs up a skeleton in her rose garden. She also discovers that her aunt had enemies. Jenny attributes her ignorance of this to her aunt's ability to always see the best in everyone and to her philosophy that what others think of you is none of your business. Unfortunately Jenny is not as steadfast in her ability to follow that mantra, especially when she is met with the unwelcoming committee on the island. She soon realizes that some of the current islanders are still holding onto a fifty-year-old grudge which now, with Winnie gone, is directed at her. As Jenny delves into her aunt's diaries, letters, and old photograph albums, as well as old newspaper gossip columns, Jenny discovers who was buried in her aunt's garden some fifty years ago. She also finds the Pied Piper gardener who was the great love of her aunt's life. She reads of artists who stayed with her aunt and other visitors to the island from a lifetime ago. She learns about her aunt's beautiful friend Maggie who broke hearts and destroyed friendships. And she learns why she is not welcome in the Main Street Market, the Cut, Curl, and Color Hair Salon, and most painfully, The Crown and Anchor Pub.

Malcolm MacGregor is a friend and former professor of Jenny McNair's. Having loved her throughout her twenty-year marriage which recently ended, he is now ready to divulge his true feelings to her. It is challenging, however, because, not only is he rather slow at making advances, but now he is also distracted by a case with which he is assisting Jenny's father, PI Charlie McNair. Or perhaps it is his blossoming relationship with Jenny that is distracting him from saving the wealthy and charming Edward Sharkey. Malcolm and Charlie make a friend in Irishman Edward Sharkey when they discover that they have soccer, rugby, Scotland, and their appreciation of good literature and excellent Scotch whiskey in common. Upon their first visit to the unique home that Sharkey designed and engineered, overlooking Puget Sound, they meet his tough but vulnerable daughter Maureen, his timid and beautiful housekeeper Sarai, his lusty, outspoken and very young Irish girlfirend Aileen, and his angry ex-wife Moira. It takes only moments for them to realize that their new friend is going to need saving from the women in his life, if nothing else. But when the adventurous and wealthy Sharkey disappears, they realize that their friend really does need saving, in the true sense of the word.

Jenny McNair, part-time and reluctant PI, is settling into life on her island in the Pacific Northwest. Recovering from a divorce and from having solved the mystery of the body buried in her Great Aunt Winnie's rose garden, she is now able to focus on her pottery and her spiritual counseling. However, her serenity is short-lived. First her peaceful life is interrupted by the plaintive cry from a remote island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. When she and her two new friends discover and rescue three abandoned dogs, Jenny also finds and rescues a teenage boy on the run from a band of corrupt cops. Her calm life is further interrupted by a bizarre art sculpture theft, and finally and most happily, by a new love interest. Overwhelmed, Jenny enlists the assistance of her detective father, Charlie McNair, and her friend and former professor, Malcolm MacGregor, to solve the mystery of who has betrayed young Josh Mitchell and why he needs to stay in hiding. As Jenny focuses on Josh and her rescued oversized Australian shepherd-Bernese mountain dog, and the theft of a friend's sculpture, Charlie and Malcolm are led on a mystery of their own that involves the fourth book in the Jenny McNair series, Saving Sharkey, which overlaps with Three Dog Island and is written from MacGregor's point of view.

When a baby is kidnapped in the park adjacent to their West Seattle home, private investigator, Jenny McNair, and her fiance, Malcolm MacGregor, feel compelled to help find her. Their search takes them on a journey into the relationships of the baby's family—father, mother, sister, and mother's ex-husband. Because it is apparent that only an athlete—most likely a runner—could have outrun MacGregor and escaped the park, it leads them on an in-depth observation of several instructors and athletes at a local college. However, it is Jenny's own relationships, particularly with her own ex-husband and her daughter, that give her the insight to solve, not only who is behind the kidnapping, but who is behind the threats and violent acts directed at clients of her father's, Detective Charlie McNair. In Jenny's inimitable way, she quiets her mind and finds the stillness that allows her intuition to guide her. It is that process, along with her ex-husband's jealousy, her own feelings of envy, an airport parking lot, her daughter's familiar scent of vanilla and lilac, and even the English setter puppies that she and MacGregor rescue from Puget Sound, that help them solve the mystery behind the crimes.

When Jenny McNair travels to the charming town of Ojai, California to visit her best friend, she unexpectedly lands in the midst of a real estate retreat. Not only does the detective and spiritual counselor have little interest in learning about real estate, but she soon discovers that, unlike the special town where her friend lives, this so-called retreat is anything but a peaceful, calm haven. Rather, the atmosphere is competitive and hostile and soon turns tragic when one of the agents is pushed off a cliff to her death. Jenny meets all the suspects, and, with the help of her Scottish detective father and Scottish professor husband, she assists the police in solving the crime. Unfortunately they are not able to do it before a second death occurs. Jenny delves into the lives of, not only the suspects, but of the victims and their families, learning about their backgrounds, relationships, personalities, as well as discovering their darkest secrets.