As Teachers, the DorothyL Group is Better than a Course in Literary Criticism

They call themselves mystery lovers, an international collection of readers and authors who come together as a discussion group at the Internet site DorothyL, named as a tribute to the renowned British author Dorothy L. Sayers. But these people are teachers, with a capital T. In their polite, subtle ways, they have the ability to push an old brain to consider new concepts, as The Old Cobbler recently learned once again.


A couple of cobblings ago, I raised the following question. Do readers of series want their main characters to stay at home? The general consensus was yes, BUT…. Within the BUTS lies the truth that these folks are teachers. How were these “BUTS” expressed?

Kaye Barley wants her main characters to stick close to home, but listed an exception. “I love it when Deborah Knott [main character in a Margaret Maron series] Knott takes us all over North Carolina.” Dave Bennett said he agreed with Kaye, but added that he also “loved to ‘travel’ with the protags.” Vicki Lane was on the stay at home side, but continued, “Elizabeth George or Dorothy Sayers can move around in England, however, and it's fine by me.”

So what are these readers saying about “staying at home?” Treresa de Valence said, “The character (with supporting cast) needs to stay inside their own world.” Pattie Tierney wants her “main characters to stay in their natural habitat.”

“Their own world” and “their natural habitat” gives “staying at home” a much broader meaning, gives room to Dave Bennett’s desire “to ‘travel’ with the protags,” allowing Kaye Barley’s Deborah Knott to “take us all over North Carolina.” It makes room for Chester Campbell to “enjoy a series that stays around home,” but “get a bang out of Jack Reacher who has no home.”

So is the real issue for readers not so much “staying at home,” but that the main characters stay true to the “world” or “natural habitat” where we first came to know and enjoy them? How far outside that realm can a character stray and give readers the same level of satisfaction and enjoyment?

Would a Jack Reacher read be as enjoyable if the next book has him settled down in Iowa, working as a truck mechanic and married to a widow with three kids? Would a China Bayles read be the same if we did not find her in Pecan Springs, interacting with family and friends, but traveling across country with a person who is more business acquaintance than close friend to spend time in a world of strangers?

Many years ago, The Old Cobbler suffered through hours of college classes in literary criticism. Some of the comments and concepts from those hours about why we read and what we should get from that reading still haunt my brain, and seem as silly as when I first heard them. The folks at DorothyL make a lot more sense, are a lot more enjoyable, and make me think more much more than did a couple of college professors with doctorates in English Lit.

Two Dutch Ladies, Hot toddies, Make Visit To Dickens House a Special One

(The following are the memories of a special day, brought to mind by writer Rick Mofina, who presented on DorothyL, one of the other Internetworks, his comments about a recent trip to London.)

It was 1971, the week between Christmas and New Years. My wife and I had decided to spend her holiday break from teaching in London. We had a long list of mutually agreed upon places to go, things to see. However, some of the items were personal choices. Mine were ironmongers (hardware stores). They are a story unto themselves, but this is about a must-see item on my wife’s list, the Dickens House. She taught high school English, including a section on Charles Dickens.

On the day of our visit, we left our hotel near St. James Park and took the tube to the Russell Square Station. We had been told it was the closest tube station to the Dickens House. From there we would have only a mile and half or so walk to the house. It was one of those days in London when the wind was blowing off the North Sea with a penetrating force, making the mile and half walk seem like many times that. We were frozen to the bone when we reached the modest appearing address. I opened the door, helped my wife get in out of the wind and followed her.

We were in a hallway that let into the interior of the building. Coming toward us were two women. The first one grabbled my wife, but the one in the rear began shouting, “Not her. Not her. He’s the one.” Both women then grabbed me by the arms and informed me that I was officially the 30,000th visitor to the house that year. It was the first year that number of visitors had been achieved.

In honor of the event, my wife and I were led to a room in the rear of the house and offered hot toddies and biscuits. The two women, from Holland, and members of what they called the Dickensian Society, said they were certain that the magic number would be reached that day, and had been present since the house opened that morning, waiting to greet the lucky individual.

The two women were impeccably dressed in what my wife and I later agreed was certainly the ultimate in fashion for their advanced age. The manner in which the hot toddies and biscuits were served was, to state it simply, worthy of a state dinner. However, it took only minutes to realize the ladies’ difficulty with the English language was not their Dutch background so much as was the fact that they had kept boredom away during the morning with their mixture of brandy, tea, honey and lemon.

The ladies’ condition made the special, private tour we received of the house a most interesting one. We got a very up close and personal tour of the house’s minutiae, including gathering in a close huddle to look at the exact nail on which some character in a novel used to hang some an item of clothing. Beyond the nail, we were shown scars in the floor, marks on the wall, and something had to do with one of the steps on the stairs to the second floor. Some pieces of furniture were pointed out. I don’t recall if the desk that Rich mentioned was on the list, but there was a stool on which some character sat to tied his shoes.

Somewhere in my house, buried among the mass of stuff collected over forty plus years, is a book. I don’t remember the title, or the exact words written inside, but it is my special memento for being the first person to be tagged as the 30,000 thousandth visitor to Dickens House during a given year. The memory is worth much more than the book.

Do Readers of Series Find it Enjoyable When Main Character Leaves Town?

If you are a reader of a long-running series built around a single character, do you want the main character to stay close to home? Or do you find the read equally enjoyable when the main character leaves town on a long-distance jaunt? The Old Cobbler’s thoughts on this issue surfaced years ago with the TV show, Murder She Wrote.

The show was on my can’t-miss list of favorites. I was far beyond the age to say it was a boyhood crush on Angela Lansbury, who portrayed Jessica Fletcher in the series. But the lady who has been described as “one of the kindest and most unselfish of players ever,” was a big part of the show’s appeal for me.

Lovers of mysteries know the story line. Each week someone got bumped off in or near the fictional New England village of Cabot Cove. Jessica Fletcher was the amateur sleuth who, with wit and impeccable manners, managed to charm her way about the village, ferret out facts, disagree with the authorities when necessary, and solve the mystery.

But as the years rolled by⎯the show was on the air for more than a decade⎯all the local bad guys seemed to have been killed off. We started seeing out-of-towners as the victims. And then we started seeing Jessica Fletcher on the road. But seeing her in New York City or visiting a military base, surrounded by a new cast of characters was not the same for me.

Without the sheriff, the doctor, the other citizens, interacting within the ambiance of Cabot Cove, it was no longer the omelet I’ve come to love. Jessica Fletcher remained the eggs, well prepared and beautifully served, that held the omelet together, but I never developed the same taste for the omelet’s ever-changing ingredients that I had for the old standbys, being served on a Cabot Cove platter.

These days, I read far more than I watch television. I prefer series⎯maybe a holdover from TV-watching days. And I’m finding that I have the same reaction as I did with Murder She Wrote. When the story line takes the main character away from home, out of familiar territory, the story changes for me.

It seems that no matter how intriguing the mystery with which the main character might become involved, how interesting the new characters encountered might be on these out-of-town trips, I find I miss the familiarity of interactions with the folks back home.

I recognize that keeping the main character at home, book after book, especially if their hometown is a small one, can become a problem for authors. There are only so many plots that can be created within the same small town. There are only so many citizens that can be killed off before the writer of a series faces the Cabot Cove problem⎯pundits started calling the main character’s home town the murder capital of the world.


So to the question that started this cobbling: which do you prefer, assuming a preference exists? Do you enjoy hitting the open road with the main character and forget the folks back home during the trip? Or do you want the main character to stick around town so that you can have another visit with all the townsfolk you’ve come to know and enjoy?

Susan Wittig Albert’s Lecture on Herbs Draws Large Crowd in Wms'burg, VA; Promoting New book: WORMWOOD

When an author goes on tour to promote a new book, it seems to make a great difference if the author has something to talk other than the book. Proof of this was Susan Wittig Albert’s appearance in Williamsburg, Virginia, this past Wednesday as part of her current tour to promote WORMWOOD, the seventeenth book in her China Bayles series.

It was not a typical book signing session in a bookstore. The Herb Society of America/Colonial Triangle of VA unit sponsored the event. It was held in the city’s Community Building, an example of spacious but subdued modern design that fits perfectly into the architectural blend of a city that is dominated by buildings in the colonial style.

Susan was scheduled to speak at 1:30, with the doors opening at one o’clock. When The Old Cobbler arrived ten minutes after the hour, bought a copy of WORMWOOD, and got in line, there were already over a dozen people waiting to get their book autographed. The signing continued at a steady pace until Susan’s presentation began.

How big was the gathering. There were one hundred and twenty-four chairs set up in the main meeting room of the building. When everyone was seated, there appeared to be some fifteen-twenty empty chairs at the back of the room. It is a safe estimate that over one hundred people attended the session.

In addition to writing seventeen books in the China Bayles series since 1992, Susan Wittig Albert has become recognized as an expert on the history of herbs and their uses during different periods of history. Her forty-minute presentation, "Earth’s Rich Bounty: the Shakers and their Herbs," was laden with enough facts and anecdotes to make a TV documentary. It was not until the question and answer period that there was any degree of discussion about her latest book and her writing career.

The Old Cobbler had to leave after the lecture, missing the social session with refreshments, but when I left there were still folks around who wanted to buy a book and get it signed.

I know from the experience of researching and writing historical non-fiction that enough good stuff was dropped in the editing process to produce a lecture as interesting as the book. My thought as I looked at the large crowd and listened to Susan Wittig Albert was that many authors who are looking for new ways to promote and sell their books might want to look at the lecture circuit, which was once a large part of American life back when. It appears if the author picks the correct topic to talk about, the people will come to listen. And buy a book.

Maria Hudgins, Retied Teacher, Mixes Love of Travel and Writing Talent to Produce the Dotsy Lamb Mystery Series

How often does one hear a person say they want to travel after they retire? Or write a book? Or both? Well one person had done both. Make that two books.

Maria Hudgins, a resident here in The Old Cobbler’s home town of Hampton, Virginia, taught oceanography, chemistry, biology and earth science at a local high school until she retired in 2002.

The first book in her Dotsy Lamb Travel Mystery series, DEATH OF AN OBNOXIOUS TOURIST, set in Italy, was published four years later. Her second mystery, DEATH OF A LOVABLE GEEK, set in the Scottish Highlands, hit the bookshelves in 2008.

It just a guess, but the lady must use a laptop.
Her passport has taken on a well-used appearance from a half-dozen trips to England, including attendance at two St. Hilda’s Crime and Mystery Conferences at Oxford, plus tours of Italy, Scotland, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Greece, Egypt, Spain, and Turkey.


Her travels have not been all play and no work. Two stops on her travels are ones that start out as fun, but quickly take on the aura of hot and dirty toil. She has worked on an archaeological dig on the Isle of Man and a dinosaur dig in Montana.

The main character in her books, Dorothy “Dotsy” Lamb, is not the typical amateur sleuth. When not traveling the world, Dotsy teaches ancient and medieval history at a college in Virginia. She is also the divorced mother of four grown children, four boys and a girl. She had a well-honed instinct to smell a rat and does not suffer fools gladly. However she is a lady. She bites her tongue, to the fool’s later regret.

Dotsy’s traveling companion is Lettie Osgood, a married lady whose husband’s idea of travel is going no farther than the nearest fishing hole. Lettie, who works as a part-time librarian when not traveling with Dotsy, has an amazing ability to recall details, but her logic sometimes defies … logic.

In Scotland, Lettie is the driver of their rental car. Dotsy asks how many gears the car has.
“Five, I think, but I only use a few of them.”
“Five, forward gears, plus reverse?”
“Yes, but I only use reverse when I need to back up.”

In Italy, the two ladies are part of a tour group when fellow travelers die under suspicious circumstances. In Scotland, Lettie is researching her ancestors while Dotsy is part of an archaeological dig where one of the student workers is brutally murdered.

The Old Cobbler found both books to be enjoyable reads, educational as well as humorous, but I stop short of calling them cozies. The first book might sneak in, but the second one has a sharp edge or two that put it outside the most commonly accepted boundaries for cozy.

The only question, when thinking about the author’s travels, is: What will be the setting for her next book? Rumor has it that the story takes place on a cruise ship.