Jeanne M. Dams

This was a very well-written book about a genre-savvy older woman amateur detective. Rich and realistic characters, discussions between Dorothy and Chief Constable Alan that referenced Miss Marple, Mrs Pollifax, and Inspector Lestrade among others (Alan is just as genre-savvy, though from a rather different viewpoint as a professional cop). The murder is unexpected and tangles Dorothy accidentally (she finds the body); for various reasons, worked out in solid logic though perhaps not wisdom, show more she continues poking at the questions. And finally, after multiple other disasters, she has a revelation and puts it all together. Two problems, for me - one, the question she didn't ask at the time (that solidified the revelation, eventually) is what I would have asked instantly in any similar circumstance (and then she doesn't mention the matter to Alan, though she does to a few others). And two, I was utterly not in the mood for this - I did mention realistic, right? She's a recent widow who moved to England (from Indiana) as she and her husband had been planning to do. So she's still mourning, feeling very uprooted and disconnected from her current social setting, and unsurprisingly quite depressed. While she works through it (makes good steps, anyway), this is not what I wanted to read about right now. I think I'll keep this series in mind for some later time - it is very good, if I were up to it. There's also a few problems with the e-book process in my copy - some obvious scannos (Iie for he, for instance), which would have been caught if they'd done a spell-check. And a missing floor plan of the church - a long endnote explaining the layout of the cathedral, with a footnote in that saying that italicized words would be found on the floorplan, but no image. Minor, but annoying. show less

Dorothy Martin’s neighbour and best friend, Jane Langland, is upset when Bill, an old friend of hers, goes missing; not only is he not the type to disappear suddenly, but the two of them were old lovers, reunited after a lifetime away and planning to marry. Jane is not a demonstrative woman, so Dorothy knows that her friend is very worried indeed; when Bill is found dead in a tunnel below the local museum where he worked, Dorothy is loathe to believe it was due to natural causes, and when show more Bill’s assistant is assaulted in the same museum, she knows that it was not…. I’ve been reading the Dorothy Martin series for some time now, but it is only with this entry, the ninth in the series, that I finally started seeing Dorothy as a whole person rather than a collection of attributes and eccentricities. The writing is crisper in this book than previously, and the author has finally stopped (more or less) mentioning how Dorothy is an ex-pat American trying to get used to the strange language and habits of the English. The final reveal at the very end of the book was perhaps a coincidence too far, but it had no bearing on the main mystery and so can be forgiven. I think one might do best to start with this book and then work backwards (if the reader wishes) to the earlier, less believable novels in the series; recommended. show less

Hilda Johansson, a Swedish immigrant to the United States who is working as a servant in a large house in South Bend, Indiana, discovers the body of a woman. The deceased had returned from China, where she had served as a missionary. Her return was precipitated by the Boxer Rebellion. What reason could anyone possibly have for murdering the woman? Convinced that the police will blame an immigrant for the woman's death when she is certain someone else committed the offense, Hilda begins to show more investigate on her own, ignoring the butler's admonitions against doing so. I failed to connect with the characters. I particularly disliked the butler in Hilda's household and secretly wished he had been the perpetrator. I had higher hopes for this series since the author's Dorothy Martin series is one of my favorites. Hilda really had no reason to investigate. She put herself and her friends in a great deal of danger by doing so. Very few of the actions seemed to be authentic to a servant of her prescribed station in that time period. I do not intend to read future installments. show less

Dorothy Martin is a 60+ American widow who, following her husband’s untimely death, chose to follow their shared dream of moving to a small village in England, in this case Sherebury. She has slowly been meeting people there, but has not yet settled into small-town life when she quite literally stumbles across a body in the cathedral transept: Canon Billings, an officious religious figure but brilliant scholar too, had managed to alienate almost everybody he met before he was ushered show more violently into the next world. Because she feels intimately involved due to finding the body, Dorothy starts searching for answers to the crime despite the misgivings of Chief Constable Alan Nesbitt. Before too long, there is a second killing, and a mysterious arson fire, and it appears that Dorothy is coming uncomfortably close to the truth…. I’ve been on a “cozy” kick for some time now, so when this series came to my attention, I thought I’d start with this first book and see from there. It’s actually fine, as far as cozies go: Dorothy is an engaging character (who has an unabashed Thing for serious hats), and while the deaths are gruesome, they also occur off-stage. I’m not too sure about the American-in-England conceit, as I tend to prefer those books set in England to be written by English authors, but the fish out of water aspect adds a little frisson to the setting (which, by the way, is fictitious). Also, the reader will spot the budding romance from a mile away, which can sometimes be annoying. Not sure how many of the 20-odd books in the series I’ll get to, but it may work as a stand-by series for me to pick up again when I run out of other things to read; mildly recommended. show less