Crisis at the Cathedral

I have read all 19 of the Dorothy Martin mysteries from Jeanne Dams and was happy to receive a digital ARC for the new book in the series–Crisis at the Cathedral.

I first met Dorothy Martin–an American living in Shrewsbury, England–in The Body in the Transept and Trouble in the Town Hall back in the 1990s, but then life intervened and didn’t have much time for reading.  I re-discovered the series recently through my public library’s Hoopla app and spent several hours enjoying her investigations.  As she often says, she doesn’t look for trouble but often seems to end up in the thick of things anyway.

Much to my surprise, I was unable to get into the new book.  I read the first few chapters, and it took me time to pick the book back up.  The story centers around a missing Muslim couple who disappeared suddenly from Shrewsbury, living their children asleep at the local inn.  The resulting to-and-fro from Shrewsbury to London while Dorothy and crew search was drawn-out and didn’t do much to move the story forward, and the final third of the book strained credibility.

I’m hoping that this is an anomaly and that Dorothy returns to form in her next outing.

 

The Sixth Day

This is book 5 in the “Brit in the FBI” series by Catherine Coulter and JT Ellison.  I hadn’t read any of the previous ones, but was able to pick up the series without trouble.  There is some crossover with Coulter’s “FBI Thrillers” series with a cameo by Savich and Sherlock.

It must be difficult to come up with new plots for government thrillers, but The Sixth Day provided a new twist that was entertaining and fun.  I enjoyed the book, and while I wouldn’t class it as intellectually taxing, it was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon reading.

I received access to a copy from NetGalley.