The Case of the Dotty Dowager

May 25, 2015
This underwhelming first in a new cozy series from Ace (The Corpse with the Sapphire Eyes and three other Cait Morgan mysteries) introduces the WISE Enquiries Agency, so named because its four female partners—Carol Hill, Christine Wilson-Smythe, Mavis MacDonald, and Annie Parker—hale from Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and England respectively. Mavis asserts that they are able to bring their own “national, as well as uber-national, sensibilities to bear upon a case,” but such sensibilities have no bearing on the puzzling case of Althea, Dowager Duchess of Chellingworth, who phones her son, Henry Twyst, in the middle of the night, to report a corpse in her dining room. But when Henry arrives at her home in Powys, Wales, he finds no trace of a body or evidence of an intruder. Only when Althea produces a bloodied hat she says was beside the cadaver does he take her claim at all seriously. Readers will hope for more memorable characters and sleuthing in the next installment.

July 1, 2015
When Althea Twyst, Dowager Duchess of Chellingworth, calls her son, Henry, to tell him she's found a dead body in her dining room, he is at first shocked, then skeptical. Rushing to her house, he finds no body, only his mother holding a bloodied blue bobble hat. Worried that his mother is losing it, he calls the local police, who say that without a body, there's no case. Frustrated and not wanting anyone on the estate or in the village to know his mother may be either hallucinatory or senile, Henry calls on the WISE Enquiries Agency for a bit of discreet help. Going undercover, the four WISE women investigators try to discover what's really going on. Who knew they would find a legitimate murder case involving kidnapping, fraud, and forgery? A charming, cleverly plotted, engaging British cozy that's sure to appeal to genre fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)