Browsing for a great mystery to read? Look no further than the spellbinding page turner Ragged Island written by Darcy Scott. Ragged Island is the third in a series of three Maine Island mysteries which have collectively won a number of awards (Best Mystery, 2013 Indie Book Awards; Silver Award, 2013 Readers Favorite Book Awards; Bronze Award, 2013 IPPY Awards; Winner, 2019 National Indie Excellence Award, Northeast Regional Fiction).
The series protagonist, a Maine botanist, university professor/playboy, travels island to island supposedly cataloging plants. He’s really meddling in island affairs and becoming involved in a series of grisly murders. In Ragged Island, Gil “Hodge” Hodges returns to Matinicus ,the setting of the first book in the series. He hopes to settle a few scores and come to grips with his troubled past. He, instead finds himself embroiled even more deeply in the life of the island.
Scott, has been writing since she was a teenager and has published five books over the last nine years. She is every bit as adventurous as her characters. Scott and her husband split their time between a residence in Lee, NH (Oct. through May) and the coast of Maine where they live aboard a sailboat in the warmer months, bouncing between their moorings in Kittery and Rockland . “I search out islands with interesting histories that might lend themselves to the murder mystery genre,” Scott said.
Scott is an experienced blue water sailor with over 30,000 ocean miles under her belt. “I’ve sailed to Grenada and back on a whim, island-hopped through the Caribbean, and been struck by lightning in the middle of the Gulf Stream,” she said. “Despite all this adventuring, my favorite cruising ground still remains the coast of Maine, where I’ve been sailing for more than two decades.”
Scott’s inspiration for Ragged Island came from a dangerous situation she experienced. “A storm at sea forced me to take refuge in the harbor on the remote, real island of Matinicus just outside Penobscot Bay—a place bursting with atmosphere and possibility: a wild west-meets-beeper-generation lifestyle, an unbelievable 22 species of wild orchid, and the ghost of a child some 200 years dead,” she said.
Scott has a small writing studio in her home and another on the boat, which she calls a wonderfully peaceful place to do creative work. “I write for three or four hours most days,” she said. “The process varies depending on whether I’m in research mode or have progressed into the actual writing. As I’m zeroing in on an ending, I’ve been known to stay with it for eight hours or more,” she concluded.
Scott’s books can be purchased through her publisher, Maine Authors Publishing in Thomaston, Maine (www.maineauthorspublishing.com), at RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth (www.riverrunbookstore.com), and on Amazon.
Scott is a member of the New Hampshire Writers’ Project, the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, and Sisters in Crime.
