The Reading Room: The Case of the Absent Heirs (WISE Enquiries Agency #6) by Cathy Ace: Reading Room Review

The Reading Room: The Case of the Absent Heirs (WISE Enquiries Agenc...:   There’s something so exciting about a book set at Christmastime when it’s a book in a favorite mystery series.   You get to see the char...

The Reading Room: The Corpse with the Turquoise Toes by Cathy Ace: Reading Room Review

The Reading Room: The Corpse with the Turquoise Toes by Cathy Ace: R...:   Criminal psychologist Cait Morgan and her retired homicide detective husband Bud Anderson are off to the Arizona desert in the 12th Cait M...

SHOTSMAG CONFIDENTIAL: The Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence 2022 Shortlists

SHOTSMAG CONFIDENTIAL: The Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence 2...:   Crime Writers of Canada (CWC) have announced the Shortlists for the 2022 Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence in Canadian Crime Wr...

The Reading Room: The Corpse with the Granite Heart by Cathy Ace: Reading Room Review

The Reading Room: The Corpse with the Granite Heart by Cathy Ace: Re...:   I used to be a real stickler for reading a series in order, start with #1 and proceed, and I still prefer that. However, with age comes le...

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Case of the Missing Morris Dancer by Cathy Ace

The Case of the Missing Morris Dancer  by Cathy Ace (Severn House, 2016) is the second in the series featuring the WISE Enquiries Agency, which operates from a ducal estate near Anwen-by-Wye, Wales. This agency comprises women investigators from Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and England, hence the acronym in its name.

The Duke of Chellingworth is getting married and everyone in the community has strong ideas about the activities that must surround that event to make it absolutely right. He is juggling the demands more or less successfully when the always-reliable musician and hereditary leader of the village Morris dancers disappears a week before the wedding along with all of the necessary paraphernalia. The disruption to the regional traditions and local sensibilities should the event proceed without the Morris dancers is too horrible to contemplate, and the ladies of the WISE agency are called in by the Dowager Duchess after the police find no evidence indicating foul play has occurred.  When the investigators learn the missing dancer planned a long vacation after the wedding that his friends didn’t know about and his van turns up in an out-of-the way lay-by, everyone is alarmed.

Each of the four investigators has a unique skill set that the group recognizes and deploys to advantage, making the overall agency greater than the sum of its parts. The folklore of Morris dancing and its origins are smoothly worked into the story line, which has a couple of surprises near the end.

A Welsh-English dictionary would have been helpful in reading this book, as the villagers often speak in their native Welsh and no translation is offered, although usually I could guess meaning from the context. There are two more books in this series after this one; the well-delineated characters and the picturesque setting lend themselves to a nice long run for the ladies of WISE.

·         Hardcover: 224 pages

·         Publisher: Severn House Publishers; First World Publication edition (February 1, 2016)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 0727885545

·         ISBN-13: 978-0727885548

Aubrey Hamilton ©2018

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal IT projects by day and reads mysteries at night.