AUNT DIMITY AND THE KING'S RANSOM

Lori Shepherd is an American housewife living in an agreeable English village with her devoted husband Bill and their three children. In a series of novels in the "cosy mystery" genre, Lori is assisted in her investigations by the ethereal Aunt Dimity. Dimity was a friend of her mother, bequeathing Lori a notebook whose blank pages mysteriously fill with cursive writing whenever she consults it for help in a crisis. When Bill has to visit a client in Sussex, Lori accompanies him as far as Blayne Hall and then drives off on her own down the back lanes. Soon impossible weather conditions arise and she takes refuge from the cyclone in St Alfege church, a Norman building with a fine exhibition of ecclesiastical needlework. A voice from the darkness accosts her, which turns out to belong to a man with a quirky sense of humour dressed entirely in black. As the villagers also take refuge, Lori realises that her new friend Christopher is in fact a bishop, and it is he who finds her a room at the King's Ransom Inn in Shepney, staffed by a very eccentric collection of people. Lori has a feeling that the trouble is only just beginning, and it turns out to involve trapdoors, underground tunnels and a chef with a shady past. 232pp.