A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy (Stephen Ramsay Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

by Ann Cleeves (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Cleeves ( Murder in My Backyard ) allows her respect for the traditional mystery to fossilize her writing into a formula. The victim is the vicar's wife. The setting is a prototypical English town during a fair. The detective, Inspector Ramsay, is an unmarried and singularly brainy member of the constabulary ably assisted by a loyal sergeant who desperately desires action, not theories. Ramsay is as mundane and conventional as the trappings, as he tries to understand the victim while tracing her last hours of life. Meanwhile a succession of suspects is paraded for the reader's inspection, including the victim's stepson, his insecure girlfriend, a half-witted young man half in love with the victim, a dying widow, a social worker and an alcoholic ne'er-do-well. Unfortunately, none of them grabs our attention or loyalty, even after the half-wit is the victim of the inevitable second murder. The pace slowly picks up after that, and the concluding 20 or so pages are suspenseful and fast-paced, but they seem slim reward for readers who must slog through the first 190 pages of cliched two-dimensionality to get there.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description
From the author of MURDER IN MY BACKYARD comes this mystery where a vicar's wife has done her last good deed...

Vicars' wives do not usually get themselves murdered....especially when they are as vibrant and caring as beautiful Dorothea Cassidy. But murdered she unquestionably was; and from the outset Inspector Stephen Ramsay is hard put to figure out why, let alone who. And though he did not know her in life, she charms him in her death.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Fawcett (January 22, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449147894
• ISBN-13: 978-0449147894
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,007,044 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Old time mystery, May 7, 2007

By	Jennifer Smith "jhobbit" (Andalusia,,Alabama) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you enjoy mysteries without gore and sex - this is the book for you - nice easy reading with a great plot !
plot !

4.0 out of 5 stars Well-written but not the author's best effort, June 14, 2009

By	Patrick W. Crabtree "The Old Grottomaster" (Lucasville, OH USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I'm a big Ann Cleeves fan. I was definitely hooked once I had finished Bird in the Hand (George and Molly Palmer-Jones Mysteries).

This story is not in the same series as the aforementioned one -- here Detective Inspector Ramsay tries to track down the killer of a vicar's wife. She was lovely and effervescent but she had acquired the bad habit of trying to "help" folks who really just wanted to be left alone. As a consequence, her corpse was discovered early one morning in the local park while a village street carnival progressed happily along nearby. This tale does not lack for suspects, even subsequent to a second murder.

I actually correctly guessed the murderer's identity at the same moment as did the police in this one -- but then I've read so many of these cozy murders that I do nowadays tend to get about sixty percent of them right.

Unlike Cleeves' George and Molly Palmer-Jones series, this one lacked the endearing wallpaper -- it was more straight-forward. While I will not re-read it at a later date, I can still certainly recommend this clever mystery as a worthwhile entry among the author's numerous other fine works.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Good Read, May 21, 2009

By	Linda S. Myers (TN) - See all my reviews

A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy by Ann Cleeves continues the Stephen Ramsay series. The protagonist is sympathetic--a British Inspector who is very human in his uncertainties and sympathies for the victims and for the criminals. He is paired with Hunter, who is in many ways his opposite number; they both are ambivalent about the partnership. The plotting is fair, in that the clues to the solution are scattered through the novel, and the reader does have the information necessary to solve the murder. There is none of the gratuitous graphic violence and gory description so often included in current novels. While not technically a "cozy," A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy certainly belongs in the softer, gentler tradition of the golden age mysteries.