{"id":6253,"date":"2025-02-22T06:04:19","date_gmt":"2025-02-22T14:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=6253"},"modified":"2025-02-22T06:04:19","modified_gmt":"2025-02-22T14:04:19","slug":"jeanne-m-dams-murder-of-a-recluse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/jeanne-m-dams-murder-of-a-recluse\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeanne M. Dams: Murder of a Recluse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oak Park Village #3<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I read the first book in this series, Murder in the Park, <\/em>when it came out in 2021.\u00a0 It stuck in my head, and when I picked up the latest book four years later, the place and characters came back to me right away.\u00a0 Set in a Chicago suburb in the 20\u2019s, the books follow now new bride Elizabeth Wilkins.\u00a0 She\u2019s separated herself at last from a difficult and controlling mother and is finding life as a young bride very pleasant.\u00a0 She and her husband are building a house and are making space for his Aunt Lucy in their new home.<\/p>\n

Aunt Lucy has served basically as a mother to her husband Fred, a lawyer, and Elizabeth loves her as much as Fred does.\u00a0 The two of them step up when Fred is flummoxed by a new client: Caroline Dobbs, who is accused of murdering her cranky Aunt Agatha, who lived alone in squalor.\u00a0 While there\u2019s no direct evidence, a neighbor had come by the house shortly after Caroline\u2019s departure to discover Agatha\u2019s body.\u00a0 Fred is convinced of Caroline\u2019s imminent arrest.<\/p>\n

The case rests on hearsay.\u00a0 And what Elizabeth can provide to Fred is basically hearsay, in the form of women\u2019s talk to one another.\u00a0 In her effort to find out information, she joins the prestigious Nineteenth Century Women\u2019s Club to access the network of connections provided by the wives of judges and politicians and prominent society figures. Whenever she turns up a bit of a lead, Fred then sets his investigator on it.\u00a0 Between them, they discover the truth of the case.<\/p>\n

The mystery part of this is well set up and thought out, but what shines are the characters.\u00a0 Elizabeth is a young woman finding herself, learning to stand up to her mother, and setting up her own household.\u00a0 Caroline, the accused woman, is just as fascinating.\u00a0 She\u2019s reluctant to talk but with Elizabeth\u2019s persistently gentle interrogation she does begin to share a bit of information.\u00a0 Some of it is revealed as the two women clear Aunt Agatha\u2019s home which is filled with junk, as is Caroline\u2019s own dusty home.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth and Lucy have also made friends \u2013 via the age old method of fresh cookies \u2013 with some of Al Capone\u2019s men who are camped out in Oak Park.\u00a0 She met Capone in the last outing and this different network is also a help to Elizabeth and Lucy as they continue their questioning of many of the town\u2019s residents.<\/p>\n

Dams really gives the reader a good feel for what life in 1926 might have been like.\u00a0 While Oak Park would now be considered a suburb, in 1926 it was a village near Chicago with its own identity.\u00a0 Elizabeth draws on her knowledge of the community as she conducts her investigation, something that wouldn\u2019t be so easy in a big city like Chicago.<\/p>\n

This was a pleasant read with characters I was happy to meet up with again, and I enjoyed the rhythm of Elizabeth\u2019s life.\u00a0 Dams made me feel like I was a part of it as I read, no small feat on her part.\u00a0 This author\u2019s work remains solid and consistently readable, and I am so appreciative of her decades of writing, which now includes over thirty five novels. —\u00a0Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oak Park Village #3 I read the first book in this series, Murder in the Park, when it came out in 2021.\u00a0 It stuck in my head, and when I picked up the latest book four years later, the place and characters came back to me right away.\u00a0 Set in a Chicago suburb in the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[103,2000,10,1998,1999,2001,1276,486],"class_list":["post-6253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-1920s-chicago","tag-cranky-aunt-agatha","tag-historical","tag-jeanne-m-dams","tag-murder-of-a-recluse","tag-oak-park-village","tag-robin-agnew","tag-severn-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6253"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6255,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6253\/revisions\/6255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}