Dorothy Martin and her husband, former Chief Constable Alan Nesbitt are traveling back to Dorothy’s hometown in Indiana, at the behest of an old friend of hers who has died and left her a bequest on the condition that she come back to Hillsburg to collect it. Once there, she is given a letter from her old friend suggesting that he has not died of pneumonia as believed, but rather has been murdered, and the dead man requests that she try to prove the same. Dorothy springs into action, with Alan rather reluctantly beside her, and soon she finds that her old hometown is both familiar and not, and that her old friends may or may not still be the same as well….As someone who moved between four countries as a small child and more recently moved to a fifth (from the US to Canada), I can relate to Dorothy’s feeling of not really having a hometown to call her own - not Hillsburg and not (yet) Sherebury, the village in England where she now lives; that sense of dislocation is nicely depicted in this, the sixth book in the Dorothy Martin series. Other than that, the town and landscape are well drawn, but the characters are a bit stereotypical and the solution to the mystery lies in a very obscure and misunderstood governmental regulation, which I think is a bit of a cheat, really. But I still like Dorothy and Alan, so I will continue to read the series as I happen upon it; mildly recommended. ( )

This was a book I stumbled on and thouroghly enjoyed. The age group of the story reminds me of the Murder She Wrote series. A typical cozy mystery. And only until the last couple pages do we figure out who dunnit. 🙂 ( )

Dorothy Martin and her husband, retired chief constable Alan Nesbitt, travel to Dorothy's former hometown in Southern Indiana to collect a bequest left to Dorothy by an old friend, microbiologist Kevin Cassidy. There they discover that the unusual terms of the bequest are the result of Dr. Cassidy's suspicion that someone was trying to murder him. Dr. Cassidy died of pneumonia, but Dorothy and Alan are soon convinced that his fear of murder wasn't unfounded. Will they find enough evidence to solve the murder?

I enjoyed seeing Dorothy on her home turf among people who had known her for years. I'm familiar with the general area that provided the setting for the book, particularly the historic town of Madison. We used to drive through Madison when we took the scenic route to visit my Indiana relatives. There wasn't as much made of the academic angle as I expected, given that the murder victim was a retired university professor. There was a glaring error in one of the few scenes set at the university, when Dorothy looked for her old friend, the Registrar, and found he'd been replaced by the Director of Student Services. The registrar's office deals with academic records, while student services deals with the non-academic aspects of student life. I thought the motive for the murder was weak, and it's not one that most readers would guess. Readers without an interest in the setting may find the mystery rather bland. ( )

Slow pacing makes for a leisurely read. ( )

Dorothy along with her now retired husband Alan travel back to her former home town in Indiana when a friend and colleague of her former husband passes away, leaving her a small legacy. When she arrives at the lawyer's office, she is also given a sealed letter which makes it clear that this friend expected to be murdered. Although the local authorities ruled it death by natural causes, Dorothy and her husband Alan decide to investigate as her friend obviously wished. They find plenty of suspects and eventually unravel the mystery.

I enjoyed this light read. Dams is one of my favorite cozy authors, and this installment in the series did not disappoint.

In the light of the current debate on health care reform, I felt that I was reading a Democratic party agenda as Dorothy was explaining the differences in the health care systems of the U.S. and U.K. to her British husband. It was obvious that the author was crusading for health care reform in this novel which would include universal coverage. This might not have been such a hot topic when the book first appeared in print in 2000, but I really wish that this had not been included, even though it is a relatively small section of the book. I really don't want the government running our health care system. ( )