Dams, Jeanne M.

The Body in the Transept (Dorothy Martin Mysteries, No. 1)

An American widow plays sleuth in England after she finds a body in a church. Recalls the finest British mysteries.

Crimson Snow (Hilda Johansson Mysteries, No. 5)

Based on a 1904 unsolved murder case, Crimson Snow weaves immigrant life, class and ethnic tensions into a taut drama centered around the Studebaker mansion in South Bend, Indiana. Hilda Johansson, a Studebaker housemaid, doesn't want to look into the murder of her brother's sixth-grade teacher. She leads a demanding life, and her Irish sweetheart is pressing her for marriage. But when an influential attorney urges her to clear his name, she must involve herself in a dangerous web of scandal and intrigue. Mystery and history buffs alike will welcome this new entry from an ever-captivating author who effortlessly weaves disparate threads through her plots, from child labor, literacy, prostitution, class, the history of the automobile and the Pinkertons.

Winter of Discontent (Dorothy Martin Mysteries, No. 9)

A Dorothy Martin Mystery. Publishers Weekly says, "...as comforting as a hot cup of tea and as deliciously spicy as one of Dorothy's mince pies."

Indigo Christmas: A Hilda Johansson Mystery (Hilda Johansson Mysteries)

Once housemaid to the wealthy Studebaker family in South Bend, Indiana, Hilda Johansson is now married and living a well-to-do life with her new husband. But her Swedish family doesn’t get along with his Irish relations. She’s having trouble finding friends, since she no longer fits into her old world and isn’t accepted in the new one. Just before Christmas, when the husband of her sole remaining friend is accused of theft, arson, and murder, Hilda has to find new ways of investigating a crime that seems to make no sense. In the hard economic times of 1904 with bank failures weekly, Hilda tries to aid the unemployed youth of South Bend by helping to form a Boys’ Club modeled after Hull House in Chicago. And she also enlists some of them as “Baker Street Irregulars” in her mystery investigation, giving the reader a vivid sense of the city and street life of the times.

Holy Terror in the Hebrides (Dorothy Martin Mysteries, No. 3)

Vacation can be murder...

A peaceful vacation on the charming Scottish island of Iona sounds idyllic to sometime sleuth Dorothy Martin. But Dorothy soon finds that while Iona is charming, her vacation won't be peaceful. Thrown in with a bickering American church tour, she tries to keep her distance. But she can't stay away from murder.

Everybody believes the unpleasant American's fatal fall from a cliff is accidental. Everybody, that is, except Dorothy. The only witness, she saw a small clue the police dismiss, one that makes her believe the death was not an accident. With the police closing the case, Dorothy feels bound to investigate. But it's a choice she may regret...

Killing Cassidy (Dorothy Martin Mysteries, No. 6)

Now that Dorothy Martin has proved to the good folk of Shrewsbury, England, that she's more than adept at sleuthing, what might be more natural than for her to bring her skills back home to the United States?

Dorothy returns to Hillsburg, Indiana, to claim a small inheritance and a large problem. Kevin Cassidy has left her some money and a letter suggesting that if he dies, he's been murdered. On the surface it seems absurd. Cassidy was 96 years old and succumbed to pneumonia. But Dorothy knows about innocent facades, as does her husband, Alan, now retired from Scotland Yard. As Dorothy begins to ask questions, Alan makes a discovery of his own: what Dorothy has been doing is hard work. With no credentials and a local police department that resents his presence, he must now learn how to uncover secrets with no one but his wife to guide him. Fortunately, she's as good a teacher as she is a detective.

With all the charm and grace that makes the traditional, British cozy-style mystery a mainstay of fans around the world, Jeanne M. Dams proves once again that Dorothy Martin is a sleuth with staying power.

Trouble in the Town Hall (Dorothy Martin Mysteries, No. 2)

Jeanne M. Dams introduced her gently nosy Anglophile widow Dorothy Martin in the Agatha Award-winning The Body in the Transept. Now Dorothy has found a body hidden in a closet in the town hall of Sherebury. The town hall itself is the object of a lively local debate between developers and renovators; could the young man have fallen afoul of someone with an axe to grind? As always, Dorothy doesn't mind putting on a ridiculous hat to ask tough questions.

A lovely old building hides a nasty crime...

A Shereby resident for a year now, American Dorothy Martin is still learning her way around the charming English cathedral town.But she recognizes a dead body when she sees one. As town debate rages over what to do about the decaying town hall, Dorothy is at that very site when the body of an unknown young man is found. Her passion for mysteries is as hot as ever, of course. Despite warnings from her dear friend Chief Constable Alan Nesbitt not to get in the way of the official investigation, Dorothy simply can't resist taking a look around. What she discovers is that there are plenty of skeletons in local closets, enough to keep an amateur sleuth on her toes -- unless the hands of a murderer reach her first.

To Perish in Penzance (Dorothy Martin Mysteries)

She was about twenty, with long blond hair, and her body was found a few days after she fell from the cliffs to her death on the rocks below. The action of the water and sea life made circulating a picture of her impossible, but even with a description, no one identified her; no one reported a girl gone missing from any of the nearby villages. She'd been fashionably dressed, obviously out for a night of partying. All the police knew was her approximate age, that she'd had a child a few months before she died, and that she weighed only about ninety pounds. The cliff from which she fell was miles from anywhere. Her death was a mystery that had haunted Alan Nesbitt, Dorothy Martin's now-retired Chief Constable husband, since 1968. It was a failure that he'd carried for years.

It was raining in Sherebury, but the sun was out in Cornwall. A perfect time to take a vacation...and a perfect chance for Dorothy Martin. It didn't matter that the incident had happened more than thirty years earlier; Dorothy was going to get to the bottom of the mystery for Alan...and uncover a new one while she was at it.

Green Grow the Victims (Hilda Johansson Mysteries, No. 3)

Sins Out of School (Dorothy Martin Mysteries, No. 8)

Just Deserts

You can take her out of the country, but you can't deprive Dorothy Martin of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings, even in merry old England. So this expatriate Hoosier is preparing a feast -- and, naturally, it wouldn't be a challenge without a crisis or two.

A retired teacher, Dorothy gets her first serving of trouble when she fills in for a missing teacher at the local school. When it turns out that the woman is now the prime suspect in the murder of her husband, Dorothy takes in the couple's young daughter for dinner.

The victim was a cruel man who used his warped view of faith to torment anyone in his path. His death was really a blessing for his wife and daughter -- but did one of them kill him? The answer leads Dorothy to secrets and lies, and into the cold heart of an evil man, and the surprising face of a killer.