The Gentle Art of Murder

April 27, 2015
Murder strikes the art department of England’s Sherebury University in Dams’s sedate 16th mystery featuring American expat schoolteacher Dorothy Martin (after 2014’s Day of Vengeance). Soon after Dorothy and her retired policeman husband, Alan, arrive at a party to honor the talented new sculpture instructor, someone kills John Chandler, the department head. Chandler was wildly unpopular with his staff, in part because of draconian budget cuts. But that doesn’t explain why he was both stabbed and poisoned before being dropped in an elevator shaft. Nor is it clear how a plane ticket from Greece or the horrendous vandalism in the art studios is connected. The obnoxious painter Will Braithwaite is everyone’s favorite suspect, but there’s no evidence. While the police investigate, so do Dorothy and Alan. Despite a couple of convenient coincidences that bring the case to a close, fans of warm and fuzzy traditional English mysteries will be satisfied. Agent: Kimberley Cameron, Kimberley Cameron Agency.

May 1, 2015
In the latest Dorothy Martin mystery, the retired American schoolteachershe now lives in Englandis invited to attend a party at a local university. Her husband, retired Chief Constable Alan Nesbitt, is also in attendance. When a dead body is discovered on the university's premises, Dorothy and Alan are determined to find out who's responsible. This amateur-sleuth cozy features plenty of likely suspects and enough suspense to keep readers guessing. Dams, who also writes the America-set Hilda Johansson series, is a talented storyteller, and even though they stick to a familiar formula, the Dorothy Martin books are always entertaining and satisfying, and they have the distinct advantage of appealing to both cozy fans who favor classic golden-age mysteries in the Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers mold (though contemporary, the Martin novels have the feel of mid-twentieth-century whodunits) and readers who like the modern version, by such authors as Susan Wittig Albert and M. C. Beaton.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)