The Dorothy Martin Series

The Body in the Transept    

My first book, my first-born child! Dorothy Martin, an American expat living in England and feeling very sorry for herself on her first Christmas Eve as a widow, stumbles over a body as she is leaving the cathedral after the midnight service.

Trouble in the Town Hall

Dorothy uncovers chicanery in high places while trying to organize repairs to her four-hundred-year-old house. I learned a lot about English bureaucracy researching this one.

Holy Terror in the Hebrides

On trip to the Isle of Iona, Dorothy finds tempest and tragedy instead of the serenity she had been led to expect. Incidentally, she also receives a proposal of marriage. Perhaps my favorite of my books, because Iona may be my favorite spot on earth.

Malice in Miniature

Dorothy discovers the world of dollhouses and rabid collectors and narrowly escapes murder herself. I got to indulge my own love of miniatures in this book.

The Victim in Victoria Station    

A young man in a train falls into conversation with Dorothy—and is dead by the time the train rolls into London. This is set in Bloomsbury, a London neighborhood I know well and love.

Killing Cassidy

Dorothy receives a small bequest from a man she knew back in Indiana, on the condition that she come back home to collect it. When she and Alan get there, they discover that the man thought he was going to be murdered. This story was born when I got a great plot idea from a friend, but one that would work only in the USA.

To Perish in Penzance

Dorothy and Alan revisit the scene of an unsolved crime from Alan’s policing days, only to become embroiled in a fresh one. The research for this book of course required a visit to Cornwall—tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.

Sins Out of School

Dorothy is asked to pinch-hit as a substitute teacher in the local elementary school and gets involved in a very nasty religious sect. I tried, in this book, to explore some of the important differences between religions based on love and those rooted in hate and fear.

Winter of Discontent    

The curator of Sherebury’s town museum is found dead, and when it turns out he was an old flame of Dorothy’s best friend, she investigates. In this one I got to talk about some of the problems of aging, problems with which I’m becoming intimately acquainted.

A Dark and Stormy Night

When Dorothy and Alan are invited for a country house weekend they expect nothing more explosive than the Guy Fawkes fireworks. Even Dorothy could not have anticipated an epic storm and the discovery of a skeleton among the roots of a fallen oak tree. I wrote this for a friend who loves the traditional country-house murder, and decided to go with the cliché title for fun.