Rating: 
Summary: Delightful? Hardly!!
Review: This book is very hard to follow unless you are of the Catholic religion and know what all the technical terms mean. The author fails to make the fictional town of Sheresbury or it's inhabitants in any way appealing. And the author never makes quite clear why a widow of comfortable means would leave a perfectly lovely life in America for a cold, foggy, damp, cramped subsistance of a life in an unheated, unpleasant, unwelcoming house in England. If it's for the ambience, the author fails to provide any that make this setting attractive. The concept is good, the writing bad.
Rating: 
Summary: A Winner! Miss Marple, move over!
Review: This is a delightful first novel and for those of us who are sick onto death of mystery and crime novels that portray sickenly graphic violence, Ms. Dams novel is even more of a pleasure.Dorothy Martin is an American widow living in the fictional English town of Sherebury. Dorothy is over 60, overweight, and given to wearing wonderful hats wherever she goes! She has a great sense of humor and a genuine feeling for others. She has made friends with many of the local people and her interactions with them are charming. Dorothy lives next door to a famed cathedral; at Christmas Eve services she discovers a body and the game is afoot! Her curiosity is piqued and she decides to solve the crime. In her sleuthing efforts, she wanders about the town talking to people in high and low places. Dorothy makes fast friends with the head of the local police, Alan Nesbitt, and it becomes obvious to readers that a romance is in the making. There are wonderful descriptions of the town and its inhabitants abound and Ms. Dams nicely explains the differences between American and English viewpoints. Buy this and enjoy! (I've already purchased and read her next three books and they were all wonderful!)
| 
