Jeanne M. Dams

Alan’s honorary great-niece Lucy is visiting Sherebury from Chicago to deliver a series of lectures about fundraising, and Dorothy is happy to make her acquaintance too. Lucy is also in love, but when her fiance is struck and killed by a speeding vehicle in London while making a surprise visit to see her, Alan and Dorothy begin to have second thoughts about his character, whether his death is an accident and who might have wanted to kill him….This is the 25th and so far last of the Dorothy Martin cozy series, which has carried readers all throughout the UK in some delightful and some dreary books; I mostly just read this for the sake of completeness. That said, it’s a reasonably good finale for Dorothy and Alan, along with their cats and faithful dog, plus the new addition of a very determined little kitten. Why the couple makes the decision they do at the very end is beyond me, though, given that Alan has kids and grandkids, and Dorothy has nieces and nephews, but perhaps Ms. Dams is setting things up for a new series with a character introduced here. In any event, a mild recommendation for this one.… (meer)

Dorothy and Alan head to a holiday in Bath, hoping to enjoy some quiet time together, but in no time at all they find themselves embroiled in criminal events: somebody placed stolen goods in the trunk of their car and, once the authorities rule them out as suspects, they are asked to assist the police in their inquiries. However, the case is baffling - most of the loot is worthless and there’s little to connect any of the items other than that they all seem to come from various museums in the region. Ultimately it is Dorothy’s inquisitive nature that may lead them to the solution, before too many people get hurt…. This is the 24th Dorothy Martin book and one of the slightest. Aside from the rather silly “crime spree” and its even more ridiculous solution, there’s not a lot going on here. Although a few people are injured, nobody dies in this book for a change, but nothing much happens either. And there are a few annoying editing errors (one character named Sylvie becomes “Sylvia” at one point, and at the end of the book Dorothy and Alan give someone a gift after everybody else has left, ignoring the fact that they are visiting someone else’s house at the time). I’ve liked this series in part because of the relationships and in part for the travelog aspects, but this one just feels tired to me.… (meer)

Dorothy and Alan are visiting Alan’s old colleague David, a former police chief in Cornwall, in the historic northern town of Durham when they are asked to look into the death of a local doctor. The man had been living in a luxurious home for wealthy dementia patients (although he had no dementia himself), where David’s courtesy aunt is accused of causing the man’s death. In their attempts to clear her name, Dorothy and Alan come across the death of a student by accidental drowning, the assault of another student, the disappearance of a somewhat shady man and, eventually, a very dangerous encounter for Dorothy…. The religiosity in this series is front and center here, especially as one of the characters is a divinity student, and the solution to the various crimes is rather slapdash, but Dorothy and Alan remain congenial characters and the setting is beautifully described. This is the 23rd (of 25) book in the series, and I will go ahead and finish the series having gotten this far, although I think one needn’t have read all the previous books before tackling this one; mildly recommended.… (meer)

Dorothy and Alan are asked by a wealthy friend to travel to Victoria, British Columbia, to look into some disturbing incidents there. The uncle of their friend, a retired RCMP officer, has been baffled by a string of seemingly unconnected, minor aggravations that are causing a disturbance in the usually serene city, and Dorothy and Alan are perhaps the only people who can figure out what is going on. Finding themselves quite charmed by the place, they soon hear of a suspicious death, and then another, more prominent, person is killed, and they must try to find out how all of these things are connected before any further calamity occurs…. This, the 22nd in the Dorothy Martin series, is rather more personal for me than most: I’ve been to Victoria several times and on the last occasion with family members celebrated my mother’s 85th birthday there by having high tea at the Empress Hotel (mentioned in the story); that was the last time I saw my mother as the vibrant person she was, as about six weeks later she suffered a massive stroke and a week after that, died. So Victoria holds many memories for me, which this book evoked to some degree. I must quibble with a couple of things, minor and not so minor: the Butchart Gardens are absolutely beautiful but are in no way *huge*, it’s really quite a small area; and at one point Dorothy tosses off the idea that a First Nations woman no doubt could *not* be an Elder despite her age when in fact many First Nations women *are* Elders in their communities; this was just a bit of assumed sexism on Dorothy’s part and shows little awareness of First Nations cultures here in Canada. All that said, the story was fine and Dorothy’s religious bent was less annoying than usual, but the solution to the crimes seemed rushed and implausible. Overall, mildly recommended.… (meer)