Sharon Duncan Books In Order

Publication Order of Officer St Claire Books

Publication Order of Scotia MacKinnon Mysteries Books

Sharon Duncan is a noteworthy American writer of mystery, thriller, and contemporary stories. She is particularly famous for writing the bestselling Scotia MacKinnon book series. In addition to being a reputed author, Duncan is an accomplished sailor, a tango dancer, and a linguist. Recently, she has started a new series of espionage stories featuring the chief protagonist named St. Clair, an MI5 officer. Author Duncan has homes on the San Juan Islands in Washington State and the Gulf of Mexico. She divides her time between her two places of residence and occasionally takes a halt in Buenos Aires. Before trying her luck in the field of writing mystery books, Duncan worked as a university instructor and developer of language tests.

After finding success with her first Scotia MacKinnon novel, she quit every other job and began focussing on the writing career. Now, she enjoys being an author and spends her days trying to develop exciting stories of mystery and thriller setups. Duncan’s books have succeeded in reading out to a large number of audiences across the globe. She is hopeful of achieving a similar amount of success with all her future books if not more. Duncan has expressed her gratitude to various critics on many occasions for giving genuine reviews and helping her novels to succeed. She is also thankful to all those readers who liked her work and supported through their excellent comments on various platforms.

A popular series of novels written by author Sharon Duncan is known as the Scotia MacKinnon Mystery series. It is comprised of five books released between 2001 and 2017. Each book of this series is set in Friday Harbor and features the lead protagonist in the role of Private Investigator Scotia MacKinnon. An exciting novel of this series is entitled ‘Quantum of Evidence’. It was released by the Western Isles Press in 2017. The central characters depicted in this novel include Lochlan McCready, Scotia MacKinnon, Captain Peder Gundersen, Captain Harrison Petrovsky, and several others. Initially, it is shown that PI Scotia MacKinnon returns from a Mediterranean sojourn and begins working on a notorious murder case. Several years ago, a horsewoman from Orcas Island was accused of killing her husband. She was convicted and handed over a life imprisonment sentence for her crime. Her husband was the philandering boat pilot from Nigeria, Captain Peder Gundersen.

The verdict seemed unfair on the part of the woman as the prosecution was not able to establish whether a murder had actually happened. Also, no dead body was found and no witnesses had come forward to testify against the suspect. The candidate who has approached Scotia MacKinnon is a County Council candidate. He is fighting the upcoming election against a newcomer named Lochlan McCready. Lochlan is an ex-clandestine operative, who has opened up the investigation on the thirty-year-old case and is not leaving any stone unturned to emerge victorious in the election. As she begins the investigation on the re-opened case, Scotia MacKinnon is forced to multitask between old records from the court, surviving jurors, elusive DNA record of Peder Gundersen, and the crisis of her personal life. In addition to all these, she is also required to contend with the fact that Captain Harrison Petrovsky has disappeared in the Indian Ocean along with his first mate, a stock trader from Shanghai. This novel provides an excellent story of murder mystery and is perfect for all those who love the work of Sue Henry and Mary Daheim.

Another mind-blowing book written in the series is called ‘Death on a Casual Friday’. It was also published by the Western Isles Press in 2019 after its initial release in 2001. This is also the first book to introduce the character of the main protagonist Scotia MacKinnon. Author Duncan has created the essential characters in this book as Zelda Jones, Jared Saperstein, Scotia MacKinnon, Elyse Montenegro, and a few others as well. This book revolves around an alleged stalker, a murdered attorney of civil rights, an alphanumeric term of 6 characters written on a yellow piece of paper, a vanished client, and connection of all these by an important factor, destiny.

Initially, Friday Harbor PI Scotia Mackinnon seems to be enjoying her life one day at a time. But, as soon as she gets a new case, her life begins to spiral down. Her new client is a woman named Elyse Montenegro. She informs her that she has lost her husband, a civil rights attorney based in Berkeley, and suspects that he has been probably murdered. When Scotia MacKinnon inquired with the police about this case, she finds them totally clueless about it. Then, Elyse Montenegro tells Scotia that someone is stalking her and keeping a watch on all her activities. The stalker follows her everywhere she goes and now she has started to fear for the safety of her life. When the best friend of Elyse Montenegro dies in suspicious conditions on an island, Elyse becomes much more fearful. She asks Scotia to look into the death of her friend as well and treat her as a murder to arrive at any conclusion.

Elyse suspects that the culprit is looking to kill the people she cares about one by one and then finally come get her when she has no one left to turn to. But, she wonders why she is being stalked when the culprit wants to kill her anyway. Later, Scotia MacKinnon delves into the past life of Elyse Montenegro and ends up uncovering important information. With the assistance of Gazette publisher named Jared Saperstein and IT expert Zelda Jones, Scotia succeeds in finding dark secrets involving Elyse’s family and an entangled web of lies, deception, and betrayal. This dark web stretches from the Bay Area of San Francisco to a small cabin located in a remote place on the Idaho mountain. And Scotia MacKinnon tries to find more information and pieces of evidence, she encounters the killer. Coming out in a deadly storm in winter on the rocky island, the killer poses a great danger to Scotia’s life. She wonders if it is in her destiny to come out of this situation alive. Her determination and never-say-die attitude keep her going and makes the killer surrender in the end. Thus, she succeeds in unraveling the mystery of the death of Elyse’s husband and adds another credit for solving a tough case to her name.