Dorothy Martin enjoys her train ride to London; she spends the time in pleasant conversation with a young American man, although his discussion of computer matters goes right over her head. She goes out of the carriage momentarily and when she returns, the man is dead! Luckily for her, a doctor happens by at that moment, confirms the death and says he will contact the authorities, so Dorothy goes on her way, convinced that the matter is in good hands. She is curious about the identity of the dead man, though, so she looks for information about the death in the newspapers and by calling the local police, but nobody has any record of any death on a train anywhere near London. This arouses Dorothy’s sleuthing instincts, but when she discovers the man’s identity, she realizes just how much danger she is in…. I’m enjoying the Dorothy Martin books, this being the fifth in the series and published around 1998. I like the fact that Dorothy is an older woman, although I’m not convinced that she would have been as completely clueless about computers in 1998 as is portrayed here; nevertheless, she is a believable character for the most part, and her various contacts and friends are well-described. I don’t know that one needs to start this series with the first book, as I think the reader does not need to know her whole background to enjoy the mystery; I find the books a pleasant way to spend a wintry afternoon, so mildly recommended. ( )

This novel is set about 4 months or so after the last MALICE IN MINIATURE. At the end of that novel Dorothy broke her leg and this novel begins with her travelling to London on the train for her last appointment with her Harley St. specialist.

On this journey she chats to a young American business man. As she is about to get off the train at Victoria Station she discovers that the young man has died after drinking a cup of train coffee. Dorothy is anxious to get to her appointment in Harley Street, and a doctor who comes along assures her the man is dead, that he will take care of getting the police, and that she should go. Dorothy is puzzled by the fact that there is no report of the death in the papers, and is assured by the police that no-one has died on the train. Dorothy is convinced that a young man had died, and eventually finds out who he was.

This leads to a most fanciful scenario where Dorothy gets herself a job in the office the young man had been heading to. She gets a computer expert and her London friends to help her in identifying the murderer, searching the offices etc, and eventually sewing the case up.

A really unlikely story with some parts that keep you reading just to find out how everything hangs together. First written in 1999, I thought Dams spent far too much of the book showing us how much she knew about computers and their software. In addition, Dorothy's new husband Alan was again conveniently away. Had he been at home, this investigation would never have got off the ground.

I might not be reading another in this series for a while. ( )

dead man disappears from train and policeman's wife traces the murderer

At the end of a train journey terminating in London's Victoria Station, Dorothy Martin discovers the body of a man who had died en route, seemingly of a heart attack. Assuming that the doctor on the scene was going to report the death to the authorities, Dorothy hurries on to a medical appointment. When Dorothy fails to read anything in the newspapers about the death, and a police inquiry reveals that no deaths have been reported on trains for months, Dorothy becomes suspicious that the man has been murdered. With the help of her friends Nigel, Tom, and Lynn, Dorothy discovers a link to the London office of a computer firm and goes undercover as a temp worker to investigate its employees, one of whom she suspects is the murderer.

Even though this book is almost 10 years old, the computer references weren't as dated as I thought they might be. The descriptions of applications and hardware are general enough that they still work. I didn't care for all the lies Dorothy told in the book -- to the police, to her friend and neighbor Jane, and to her husband who was out of town on a business trip. Oddly enough, no one seems to get angry with Dorothy for lying to them. In real life, I think her personal relationships would suffer as a consequence of her deception. ( )