Nancy Atherton

I grabbed this because I like a good (or, for that matter, bad) cozy on a lazy rainy day, and since I was going to spend a week at a medieval re-enactment, a "cozier than thou cozy" about a renaissance fest seemed like the perfect thing to bring for a rained-out afternoon.

And that is when I read it! I liked it okay - the portrayal of the re-enactors was much better than I was expecting, the scene-setting was fun, the mystery plot didn't drag too badly - but then I got to the bit where the show more protagonist is sexually assaulted, and I had to put the book down and go out into the rain for a bit.

It's not even that it's badly done - her reaction, and the town's, is believable, especially the way she has an emotional breakdown, assumes it's due to being "childishly emotional" rather than "having just had to physically defend myself from sexual assault", and then decides to spend the next week worrying about her husband's reaction to the assault rather than her own, decides it was all because she wore a low-cut top, and agrees with everyone else in town that the apparently serial rapist is just a bit of a merry womanizer.

Like I said, totally 100% believable, but not at ALL what I find "cozy". (I was also less than comforted by the fact that she blames herself for the actual bad guy [not the rapist]'s mental breakdown, because she didn't realize he was flirting with her and therefore it was clearly all her fault he thought he was a failure and decided to attempt murder??)

It's kind of depressing when a book that is clearly about a woman, by a woman, and for women doesn't seem to have actually made up its mind on the question of whether women are people.

The cover's great, though. I agree with the other reviewers on that. show less

Lori Shepherd has nothing. She temps for a job, lives with two roommates, and has had her childhood stuffed toy, her only companion, destroyed. So her life is in shambles when she receives a letter from Willis & Willis, Attorneys. When she arrives at their home, she discovers that her childhood stories of Aunt Dimity weren’t fairy tales made up by her mother; Dimity was an actual person, her mother’s best friend. And now both her mother and Dimity have gone, and Dimity wants her to come show more to England and write the introduction to a children’s book made up of those stories.

But Lori has another surprise - both her mother and Dimity have written her posthumous letters detailing why they never told her about their connection, and her mother has left a photograph - the only clue to Dimity’s past life when her mother met her. She wants Lori to find out about the photo, because it will explain what Dimity would never talk about - her past. So, with the accompaniment of Bill, (Willis, Jr.) Lori sets out for London to find the truth and learn more about this fairy tale which wasn’t one at all...

Well, first the title is misleading. This is not a mystery. There’s no murder, as one is wont to expect in a book labeled a mystery. This is women’s fiction with a little paranormal thrown in (not much). The “mystery” entails why Aunt Dimity would never talk about her past, and what Lori is sent by her mother to find out. I have to tell you that when someone reads 'mystery' in the title, you really do expect a murder or two. this should have been titled Aunt Dimity's Death, a Secret Book 1. Because that's really all it is - a book about secrets, not a mystery.

What I did find out by reading this is that I don’t like Lori at all. She’s snarky, demanding and rude, and I can’t see how Bill would even fall for her (as we know he will). She treats him like garbage throughout most of the book. She shows up at their door dressed like a bum, and Dimity’s will offers money for clothes, so he buys her decent clothing and accessories. Does she appreciate it? He shouldn’t have offered these to this ungrateful witch. She could have nicely explained to him why she didn’t want them, but she’d rather treat him like dirt instead. Then makes some comments after shopping (in her head) along the lines of how she can pick out clothes herself and she'd show him. Does she want the nice, expensive luggage he buys? No thanks! She wants a beat up canvas carryall that she can just roll up afterward. Sure, you’re traveling overseas for an extended period and want all of your clothes to be wrinkled when you get there. So classy when you check into a five star hotel, right? She's a jerk.

Unfortunately, Bill was the best part of the book; no matter what she threw at him, he never faltered. He had a great attitude to life and seemed like the kind of person you'd like to spend time with. Lori I could do without. She’s going to become a nasty old woman who sneers at everyone. You can tell by the way she treats everyone she doesn’t consider her ‘friend’. Strangers who do nice things are best trodden underfoot. I wouldn't doubt it if she treats Bill like garbage through the rest of this series. Sorry, I won’t be reading any more of these. You want to like the people you're reading about, and she just isn't likable. show less

Ok, I just finished this and was bored out of my skull. Since something is compelling me to read through every book in the series, despite my usual good judgment, I decided I had to do something to make me like this author more. I went to her Facebook page where I discovered a plethora of posts on her most recent trip to England---complete with bits of Chawton Cottage that I'd not yet discovered. She may not be great at keeping her characters or stories consistent, but she's a fellow Janeite show more so I must grant her more leniency than I have in the past...

I, fellow author and fellow Janeite, hereby and hereafter vow to stop being such a grump when it comes to the scatterbrained musings of Nancy Atherton and her editing team. Though I must, for my own sense of integrity, rate and report honestly my feelings and findings, I vow to do so in a more gracious way and to pick my battles with this series with more thoughtfulness than before. (So if you think my review below breaks the spirit of this vow, you may not want to read any I've written before it...)

I wanted to read this book because it tells the story of Bree---a character I've come to semi-like in the stories following this one. However, the far-fetched goose chase around New Zealand did get ridiculous after a bit and I found myself becoming annoyed that this was more a highlighted travelogue than any kind of mystery. The references to LOTR were sort of ok...except for the fact that so much of the technology the author describes in the settings of this book and those surrounding it doesn't seem consistent with the technology available to the average person in the late 1990s when the film was being made. I also really didn't appreciate the way the author compared getting a meaningful tattoo to the very harmful mental illness involved in cutting.

Again, I find myself asking...is this author really trying to write an unlikable character in Lori? Is Atherton meaning to make her out to be as ignorant, selfish, spoiled, and condescending as she is in every. single. book? Although so many of the details surrounding the village of Finch and its people are significantly inconsistent, the one consistency the reader can always count on is an extreme loathing for Lori. Please Mrs. Atherton, if you're reading this, please tell me! If this is on purpose, it would change my entire perspective regarding these bafflingly addictive books... Among other things, it would allow me to stop feeling so ashamed every time I succumb to the temptation to read another one... show less

Atherton, Nancy. Aunt Dimity’s Death. Aunt Dimity Mystery No. 1. Penguin, 1992.
I ran into the Aunt Dimity series when I was looking through a list of recommended Cozy mysteries. The series now runs to 20 volumes with a major publisher. This first number gives some hints at what may have made the rest of the series successful. It has a likable, somewhat complicated, first-person heroine. It mashes up comfortable locales with just enough local color to be believable. It also mashes up show more genres—a little mystery, a little ghost story, a little romance. Aunt Dimity’s ghost answers questions when she feels so inclined by making writing appear on blank pages of a journal, Aunt Dimity, herself, is perhaps the weakest element of the mix. The angst the story says she felt does not come through in her voice which is given to us only in her postmortem journal and tales other characters recount about her. I have no idea how the series will continue, but it evidently has, and I will probably read one or two more to see how Atherton gets out of the corner into which she has painted herself. 3.5 stars. show less