Fake Death - A Guest Post, Review, & Giveaway

I'm pleased to welcome Victoria Tait to Cozy Up With Kathy today. Victoria writes the Dotty Sayers Antique Mystery series. FAKE DEATH is the first book in the series and was released last week.

Can the Main Character work alone in a Cozy Mystery? 

By Victoria Tait

Ask a reader who their favourite amateur sleuth is, and you’ll receive answers such as Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and Poirot, Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody or Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum.

But even the famous Sherlock Holmes did not work alone. Watson, who narrates the stories, may be modest about his role, but he is a sounding board and a way for dialogue and Holmes’ emotions and idiosyncrasies to be portrayed. Even the minor role of the Baker Street Irregulars, a group of street urchins who run errands, now have their own series on Netflix.

While planning my new Dotty Sayers Antique Mystery series, I read, or rather listened to, the BBC dramatisation of Dorothy L. Sayers’ books featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. The British actor, Ian Carmichael, was fantastic as Lord Peter, but it is the other characters which really bring the stories to life.

My favourite is Lord Peter’s mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver – Patricia Routledge, who played another amateur detective, Hetty Wainthropp, performed the role to perfection – is dismissed by most yet she comes across as intelligent and quickwitted.

If the lead detective or amateur sleuth diligently moves from one clue to the next on their own, the story would be dull. Anthony Horowitz is clever in his books featuring ex-Detective Daniel Hawthorne as he casts himself as the detective’s sidekick and there is oodles of tension between them, as Horowitz does not like Hawthorne but can’t help admire him.

Most cozy mysteries are set in small towns or villages and centre around a business, such as a bakery, a bookshop or in my case, an auction house and antiques centre. This enables an author to write a cast of diverse characters who add humour, tension and often, a love interest.

I have to be careful when I introduce new characters, and think carefully about their names, mannerisms and appearance. I’ve discovered that those I only intend to have minor roles elbow their way into more prominent parts as a series progresses.

I would go as far as saying that the readers now expect a team element to stories. They see it in the movies and TV shows, like the extremely popular NCIS, where the main character is Gibbs, but we only experience his personality by the way he interacts with members of his team. We even become invested in the team’s side stories.

In cozy mysteries, animals, whether talking or not, are often companions to the central character and my heroine, Dotty, adopts a British blue cat. I can use their relationship to add side stories and depth.

I love writing cozy mysteries and while I concentrate on developing the heroine, I have so much fun writing all the other characters. I hope you can see this in Fake Death and other stories in the Dotty Sayers Antique Mystery series.

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Review

FAKE DEATH by Victoria Tait

The First Dotty Sayers Antiques Mystery

Recovering from a head injury, Dottie Sayers is happy to be working at Akemans Auction House. Reluctantly, she agrees to take part of a Remembrance Parade honoring her late husband and all soldiers who died in the line of duty. Shocked when the body of a soldier is found after the parade, Dottie soon realizes she recognizes the man. As she assists the auction house in appraising items, she winds up discovering that the man was not who he appeared to be. Will Dottie be able to put the pieces together and solve the mystery?

 

FAKE DEATH is a perplexing mystery. As I started to read I soon became confused. Dottie's head injury was continually mentioned, as was the attack that caused it. But what attack? By whom? I thought I had made an error and started this series a book or so in, but no, this was the first in the series. Indeed for most of the book I felt as if I was missing something important.

 

Dotty acts more like a victim than a protagonist. She appears meek and subservient to pretty much everyone. I really liked Sarah and hoped she'd help Dottie come into her own.  The story itself was interesting. I quite liked how the identities of the victim were revealed and Dottie's growing realizations as to what was going on. I loved Norman and Earl Grey and was captivated by the Duke's story.

FAKE DEATH highlights appearances and honor in a Cotswold mystery.

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Fake Death (A Dotty Sayers Antique Mystery) by Victoria Tait

About Fake Death

Fake Death (A Dotty Sayers Antique Mystery)
Cozy Mystery 1st in Series
Kanga Press (April 8, 2022)
Number of Pages c. 240

A dead body. Multiple disguises. Can an amateur sleuth see through the charade – or become a tragic victim?

Young military widow, Dotty Sayers, is delighted with her new job at an auction house in Britain’s picturesque Cotswolds. She agrees to take part in a Remembrance parade to commemorate her husband and his fallen comrades. But drama ensues when an unknown soldier is found dead.

Dotty assists the police and appraises objects found at the victim’s house, but rather than identifying the deceased, she discovers numerous personas. When a suspect is arrested, and Dotty is asked to look after Earl Grey, a British Blue cat, she realizes appearances can be deceiving. Can she track down the real culprit and prevent an innocent man from being imprisoned?

Can Dotty unmask the killer without putting her own life at risk?  

Fake Death is the first book in the captivating Dotty Sayers Antique Mystery series. If you like intriguing mysteries, entertaining characters and the glorious British countryside, then you’ll adore Victoria Tait’s enthralling tale.

Buy Fake Death and unmask a killer today!

About Victoria Tait

 

I was born and raised in Yorkshire, UK, and never expected to travel the world. But I fell for an Army Officer, and I’ve followed him from Northern Ireland, up to the Scottish Highlands, across to Africa and the Kenyan Savannah, back to the British Cotswolds, and we are now living in Sarajevo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Southern Europe. I never expected to be an author, but all this moving is not ideal for holding down a job. Instead, I’ve taken the experiences of the places I’ve lived to write vivid and evocative cozy mystery books with determined female sleuths. I have two fast-growing teenage boys, and together we’ve learnt to ski on the Bosnian mountains. I also enjoy horse riding, mountain biking and I’ve started running as a way to improve my physical fitness, mental wellbeing and shed some excess pounds. 

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