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    Body in the Transept
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    Body in the Transept
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    Body in the Transept
    Ebook238 pages3 hours

    Body in the Transept

    By Jeanne M. Dams

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    For Dorothy Martin, a widowed American who’s moved to the England she so loves, the Christmas service is painful enough. It is her first holiday without Frank. And stumbling over the body of Canon Billings does nothing to improve her mood. Of course, she does get to meet Chief Constable Alan Nesbitt, and a good mystery on a chilly English night does have some appeal . . .
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSevern House Publishers
    Release dateDec 22, 2012
    ISBN9781448300723
    Unavailable
    Body in the Transept
    Author

    Jeanne M. Dams

    JEANNE M. DAMS is an Indiana native. Her first Dorothy Martin mystery, The Body in the Transept, won the Agatha Award as Best First Mystery. A retired teacher, she has degrees from Perdue and Notre Dame, and lives in South Bend, Indiana.

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    Reviews for Body in the Transept

    3.5/5

    71 ratings5 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Dorothy, a widow in her 60s, has relocated to a small English village cottage without heat. On Christmas Eve she walks to church for Midnight service and as luck would have it, sits next to a widower who happens to be a DCI. After the service, she stumbled over what she believes to be a bag of clothes but is a body. This begins her friendship with Alan and inserts her into the police investigation. I loved the English references like going to British Museum, going shopping at Harrods the day after Boxing Day to buy crackers and her local pub the Rose and Crown.
    • 3/5
      First cozy mystery by Dams. Not bad but a little slow. I liked her characterization of American widow Dorothy Martin as quick to judge, somewhat prickly and still in mourning for her husband Frank who passed away a year ago. She now lives in England in Sherebury in a little cathedral town. The cathedral is the main focus of her life as well as the place where the body is found. The widower Chief Constable Alan Nesbitt shows more than business interest in Dorothy since she found the body of Canon Billings, but is also an interesting, attractive, smart woman. Plenty of suspects and a few friends that Dorothy can bounce ideas off of including her next door neighbor no-nonsense Jane Langland, but often she feels alone and not quite fitting in to the small town. I think she has a right to quite a bit of self pity, but she also struggles to shake herself loose from its clutches. I'm willing to read another book in the series to see how Dorothy develops.
    • 3/5
      First Line: I was struggling against more than wind and rain that night as I battled through the Cathedral Close, but I blamed my mood on the weather.American Dorothy Martin and her academic husband, Frank, had planned to retire to the cathedral/ university town of Sherebury, England. Unfortunately Frank died, and Dorothy made the move on her own. Still a new widow and a bit wobbly about being on her own, Dorothy is making steady progress at making friends and becoming a member of the community. Shortly after the Christmas Eve service in the cathedral, Dorothy literally stumbles over the body of Canon Billings, an argumentative man who had many more enemies than friends. Her discovery of the body makes Dorothy feel a sense of responsibility in helping discover the identity of Billings's killer. Little does she know that she's putting herself in harm's way.Dorothy is a round little woman in her sixties who has a penchant for colorful, over-the-top hats: "I made for it like a homing pigeon, and five minutes out of Victoria I was asleep. I would have slept right past my station if the guard hadn't remembered my hat from the morning and wakened me. There are some advantages to being conspicuous."I enjoyed the depiction of her life in a new town and a new country, as any Anglophile would who's harbored daydreams of moving to England. The Body in the Transept is a pleasant cozy mystery, but it's really not very memorable for me. Nothing like damning a book with faint praise, is there? As in everything else, reading mileage varies greatly from book to book and from reader to reader. If you do enjoy cozies about an older American lady living in England, by all means give this book a try. Even though it wasn't my cup of tea, it may very well be yours.
    • 3/5
      Good mystery in the English tradition. I enjoyed the cathedral close atmosphere, reminiscent of Anthony Trollope, but not quite as good. There real tragedy would be if a manuscript of Third Corinthians had really been destroyed.
    • 2/5
      The Body in the Transept. A cozy murder mystery full of twists. Jeanne M. Dams. Dorothy Martin Mystery Book I. rev. ed. 2020. Dorothy has decided to spend her first Christmas as a widow in the small university town of Sherebury England rather than the United States. After the Christmas Eve service, as she waits on a new acquaintance, who just happens to be a policeman, she stumbles over a body. So begins this predictable “cozy.” Mildly interesting, but not compelling. I doubt I read any others in the series.