Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #703127 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Cornwall has a tradition as a setting for good mysteries, and this latest from Dams is no exception. In the seventh Dorothy Martin mystery (after 2000's Killing Cassidy), the retired Indiana school teacher and her husband, Chief Constable Alan Nesbitt (Ret.), escape from their rainy home in Sherebury to sunny Penzance, where Dorothy avowedly, and Alan less openly, hope to find evidence to solve a mystery that has long haunted Alan the mysterious death of an unknown girl. Their Penzance vacation starts auspiciously enough with a chance meeting with a cancer patient and her beautiful daughter, as well as a party invitation from one of the town's leading citizens. Within a few days, however, history seems to be repeating itself when the daughter is found dead, apparently of a drug overdose. The opportunity to investigate is all too tempting, especially when the police shelve the inquiry to pursue other matters, including a bank robbery and the missing granddaughter of the couple's party host. Dorothy, who likes to gossip over tea or brandy, and Alan, who is methodical and thorough, make an appealing sleuthing pair. The tightly constructed plot contains enough twists to keep the reader wondering, though the somewhat weak solution rests on Dorothy's suppositions rather than on the concrete evidence her husband or the police might have provided. Well-drawn characters and striking sense of place make this a welcome addition to the series. (Nov. 23)(Forecasts, Apr. 16) and other mysteries in the Hilda Johansson series.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Rainy-day boredom leads series sleuth Dorothy Martin an American retired to England to vacation in Cornwall with her British husband, a retired policeman. Once there, she zeroes in on the unsolved 1968 murder of an unidentified young woman. Firmly and successfully in the cozy tradition.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Dorothy Martin, a sixtyish American widow newly married to her retired chief constable husband Alan Nesbitt, escapes with him for a holiday in Cornwall. She hopes to exorcise the memory of an unsolved murder that still bothers Alan: a young woman with long blonde hair found in a cove in Penzance in 1968. Arriving in lovely and sunny Cornwall, Dorothy and Alan meet a model named Lexa and her mother, who is clearly very ill. When Lexa's body is found in the same Penzance cove a few nights later, connections between the murders seem remote--or are they? Dorothy is salty and strong-minded, but she always remembers her hats and her sunscreen; her British spouse is genial and gentle but always an ex-copper. Drug dealing, the antiques trade, and Cornwall itself, its beauty and its history of smuggling, all play roles in this lively cozy. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Delightful mystery
American Dorothy Martin lives in Belleshire, England where her husband Alan Nesbitt once served as Chief Constable. Dorothy and Alan love one another and enjoy their life together, but the heavy rain is driving her crazy. They agree to escape by vacationing in Penzance, where Alan conducted his first homicide case, one he never solved.

Dorothy believes the trip will give her spouse closure for failing to uncover who killed the beautiful victim. However, the opposite happens as they come upon the corpse of the daughter of the woman killed yeas ago in that same cave in Penzance. Lexa had come to Penzance to learn the identity of her father and that of her mother's killer. Now Allan and Dorothy feel obligated to complete Lexa's quest.

Jeanne M.Dams makes a case that there is plenty of life left after sixty as her two sexagenarians' show more vigor and endurance than marathon runners do. Readers will like this crazy pair who love with a passion found in newlyweds four decades younger than them. The mystery is well written leaving the audience to wonder not only who the killer is but if he is the person who killed Lexa's mother. TO PERISH IN PENZANCE is a stirring cozy.

Harriet Klausner

Parallel Perils in Penzance
An unlikely plot, and dialogue that crosses over into trite way too often, still an interesting travelogue and glimpse into the coastal town of Penzance. Dorothy Martin is a retired American schoolteacher and recent newlywed to retired Chief Constable Alan Nesbitt. Escaping the constant rain in their cathedral town, this unlikely pair of sleuths head for the sunshine at the seaside, and another peek at a decades old crime. The likelihood of a repeat of that crime is a stretch, and Dorothy crosses the line between caring and interested into nosy and bossy one time too many for this reader. The story has moments of charm and a sense of place, but could have benefited from a map (most books could?). Not a strong recommendation, but still an interesting escape.

wooden dialogue and improbable coincidences
This latest entry in the Dorothy Martin series is characterized by wooden dialogue and improbable coincidences. It completely lacks the charm of the earlier entries in the series.

The married couple whose unlikely detective antics are at the center of this series are dull and preachy in this book. Their activities are farfetched in most of the books, but their charm and the atmosphere of their village make the books enjoyable. Unfortunately, this book lacks both charm and atmosphere. Instead of the glorious side of Cornwall, we see Cornwall as a center of illegal drug activity. Instead of charming interplay between Alan and Dorothy, we see preaching and the discussion of topics which most married couples (or even dating couples) would long have exhausted between them. There is an awful lot about Alan that Dorothy does not know, ranging from how he feels about criminals and capital punishment to what he did in the military. How could they not have discussed such topics? Alan is often patronizing to his wife, and Dorothy for the first time seems relatively unintelligent.

The mystery itself is the real weakness in this novel. It is based on the most unbelievable set of coincidences. This string of coincidences begins with the fact that Dorothy proposes a trip to Cornwall to try to solve a mystery that Alan had failed to solve thirty years earlier, and they (by chance) end up staying in the hotel with the daughter of the murder victim. Help!

I kept reading, and finished the book, but I do not recommend it. The characterizations in it are as superficial as the relationship Alan and Dorothy apparently have, and the plot is absurd.