Hour is Come by Victoria Tait is book 0.5 in her A Dotty L. Sayers Antique Mystery series and is available for free if you sign up for her newsletter.
Dotty is a newly widowed young woman, her father and husband have always made major decisions and Dotty is getting her first taste of independence. When Dotty realizes that she forgot some papers in a piece of furniture she sent to be auctioned, she goes to the local auction house to get the papers back, and is drawn into a murder mystery when she finds a body of one of the employees in the store room. Somehow, Dotty finds herself assisting with the next auction and spending time at the auction house where she is able to gather information and develop her own theories about the who committed the crime.
I will be honest, in the beginning Dotty irritated me to the point that I almost quit reading because she allowed everyone to walk all over her. It seemed like in her case being nice meant being a doormat for her family, then her husband, and after her husband’s death, his ex-wife. Although she was never extremely decisive, for the most part she didn’t appear to be quite such a pushover for most of the book so I was able get past that feeling of irritation. Aside from Dotty, there is quite a cast of characters in this book, one of my favourite characters is the bumbling Constable Varma who seems to be a walking disaster area.
I found Hour is Come to be an entertaining read, and I was kept guessing for most of the book. I will probably check out other books in the series to see if Dotty falls back into her old pattern of letting people take advantage of her, or if her character continues to grow and to assert herself.
Life, Tea, and Everything 