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Dec 15, 2017readMystery rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Everyone I've introduced "Aunt Dimity's Death" to has loved it. The first in Nancy Atherton's supernatural cozy mystery series, it introduces Lori Shephard to readers and takes her to a small English village where she encounters communication with Aunt Dimity who was a WW2 friend of Lori's late mother. During her childhood Lori's mother told her stories about Aunt Dimity which she assumed were like fairy tales until a notice of Dimity's death and provisions of her will brings Lori to England and leads to the discovery that Dimity was a real person. Over the course of the series, Lori makes jumping to conclusions almost an Olympic event but Dimity's communications with her provide cautionary advice while providing Lori with a non-judgemental sounding board for her ideas. This book also introduces village residents who become fixtures in subsequent Dimity novels, capturing some of the good and bad of living in a small, tightly-knit community that is sometimes gossipy, clannish, and superstitious but ultimately does the right thing. The gentle mystery series always highlights the inner good in the characters in resolving plotlines.