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.

 

Dare You Twice

I received a copy of Dare You Twice as an ebook from LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers.

I had read the first book in this series (I Dare You) back in November 2016, also as part of the Early Reviewers program.  The first book was rough in patches, but not horrible.  I quite liked the heroine, Kate Blackmore, and the concept of the book, and finished that 2016 review with “I’m likely to read a “Book 2″ if it comes out.”

The cliche is “be careful what you wish for”…  Well, Book 2 came out and I picked up a copy of “Dare You Twice” from Early Reviewers. Unfortunately, I was disappointed in the sequel. I like Kate Blackmore as the protagonist, but the book itself was disjointed and was all over the map; we start in Canada, dash off to the UK (while Scott heads to the Middle East) and then Kate’s off to Paris. There are at least three separate stories but I felt that justice wasn’t done to any of then.  Frankly, I was not that interested in the Scott/Joe military escapades, and would have been happy to follow clues with Kate.

In my opinion, not bad to pick up if you want some fluff reading (and I note that both books are available on Kindle Unlimited).