Death Of An Obnoxious Tourist

Dotsy Lamb #1

by Maria Hudgins

Dotsy Lamb and her friend Lettie are on a group tour of Italy when an obnoxious woman, travelling with her two younger sisters, is murdered in her Florence hotel room. They team up with Marco Quattrocchi, the captain in charge of the investigation, to solve the crime.

Genres: Mystery, Cozy Mystery, Cozy, Fiction, Italy, Mystery Thriller, Travel

275 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2006

About the author

Maria is an avid traveler and mystery lover. She is a retired teacher living in Hampton, Virginia. She started writing fiction when she retired six years ago and now has two books in print.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this debut book up, written by a local author, at a book fair many years ago and I finally took it off my shelf for some light reading. A traditional murder mystery in the cozy genre.
Dotsy Lamb is part of a tourist group exploring Italy when one of the group is found murdered. She noses around and finds many in the group seem to have secrets but did any of them commit murder, or was it truly the Roma that was arrested for the crime? Started out fairly stale and plodded along for quite sometime. It was hard to become engaged in the story, and I kept saying to myself "Let's get on with it"!! Many interesting characters but not enough of them fleshed out fully. Since this was a first effort, I am willing to give this author another try as her series is set in different foreign locales.

[Bev · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first in a series of cozy mysteries featuring Dotsy (Dorothy) Lamb, a professor of Ancient History, who quite honestly seems like the furthest thing from an academic. And this debut novel has very little to do with the academic world at all. Dotsy and her best friend Lettie are on a group tour to Italy. They plan to take in the sights--the Colosseum and the Leaning Tower of Pisa--just like any tourist as well as stopping to take in archeological museums along the way. Also in the group are the Bauer sisters, Beth, Amy, and Meg. Beth is a friend of Lettie's and Meg is more like one of the evil stepsisters in Cinderella than part of a loving trio. In fact, Meg seems to go out of her way to insult every one of her fellow travelers.

When Meg is found stabbed to death with a souvenir knife just bought by Beth, Lettie's friend is an immediate suspect--until Marco Quattrocchi, the carabinieri officer in charge of the case, arrests a local gypsy who had stolen Beth's wallet and hotel room key and was found to have been in the hotel. Dotsy is convinced that both the gypsy and Beth are innocent. But who else could have wanted to kill Meg Bauer. As it winds up--practically everybody in their tour group. There's Shirley Hostetter who was forced to leave her nursing job because of Nurse Meg Bauer. There's Wilma Kelly whose activist activities have crossed Meg's path. There's Paul Vogel who always seems to be sneaking around and asking the most awkward questions. There's Gianni, an Italian local, whose blue Fiat is in the wrong place at the right time.

Then a second Bauer sister, Amy, falls to her death on one of the tour outings and it begins to look like someone has it in for the Bauer family. Dotsy spies a piece of paper in Amy's pocket with some mysterious references on it. But the paper disappears before Amy's body arrives at the hospital. If Dotsy and Marco Quattrochi can decipher the meaning of the words, they may just find a killer.

This first Dotsy Lamb book is my second encounter with the Hudgins series. I'm glad I read Death in an Ivory Tower first. It had an academic setting and Hudgins is much more in control of her cast of characters and mystery plot. The Italian background in this one is very nice and we get an excellent sense of place, but there are too many characters and not enough information about and/or interaction with most of them. It's difficult to take some of the tour members seriously as suspects when we have so little to go on and the attempts to use them as red herrings really didn't work well. The other annoying thing was after setting up a romantic relationship between Dotsy and Marco, Hudgins has him get angry at her amateur sleuthing and things get all uncomfortable between them. Then when she has a diabetic episode towards the end of the book, he comes charging into room like a knight-in-shining armor to make sure she's okay....and then nothing. The villain is caught and Marco just fades out. It's pretty unsatisfying.

That said, I do like Dotsy and Lettie and knowing that the fifth installment is a good one will ensure that I at least read the other series book I have sitting on the TBR stacks. I also like the fact that Dotsy doesn't outdo the police or assume that she can take on the bad guys alone. She's just an inquisitive woman who has a knack for finding things out. ★★ and 1/2. (rounded up here)

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting portions of review. Thanks.

[Les · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in January I read the forth book in the series https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... and it was fine but I wasn't thrilled but I decided to start at the beginning and see if it was better and it was

Now Dotsy is supposed to be around my age and I really don't like her very much. I identify much more with my inner Stephanie Plum than my outer Dotsy Lamb.

That being said this is a fine mystery about a tour group to Italy where murder is an unfortunate traveling companion.

There a plenty of red herrings to lead you to the wrong conclusion.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Death Of An Obnoxious Tourist by Maria Hudgins is the first in a series of cozy mysteries featuring Dotsy Lamb, who, despite her name is a calm professor of archeology on a group tour of Italy. There are 3 sisters (Meg, Amy, and Beth-and, yes, they have a brother Joe) on the trip as well-and one (the most predictable one) is killed in a particularly messy way.

Dotsy is a woman in her fifties but still very much a woman and she is drawn to the Italian detective investigating the case. The characters (especially Dotsy) are believable and appropriately entertaining, the story is fine, and the sense of Florence (the main reason I read the book) very nice.

I will certainly read more in this series.

[Lori Z · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun, light read. I really liked Dotsy and her sidekick, Lettie. I also enjoyed my armchair tour of Italy, but wish there would have been more details. Overall, I liked the book and will be reading more in this series.

[Alicia Taylor · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is very hard to get into. Way too many characters to remember and understand. Too much effort was put into the crappy characters and not enough on the element of surprise. I can't even finish reading this.

[Cynthia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a light murder mystery that takes place in Italy. The descriptions of the art works were very good. I thought that the book had a few too many characters and there were enough editing/sentence structure errors to get on my nerves.
Overall, this is a book that is fine to read as long as you are not looking for a 'deep' mystery. There were so many likely suspects that although I had the perpetrator on my list as the possible killer, I was never able to guess with complete accuracy.

[Marty · Rating 2 out of 5]

. I enjoyed Hudgins’ DEATH ON THE AEGEAN QUEEN so ordered this book thinking it would be fun also. I was disappointed. This one has many more characters to keep straight –and none of the characters is really fleshed out well. I didn’t really care about any of them. The story starts when Dotsy and her friend Lettie arrive in Milano for a tour of Italy. They meet the tour director, Tessa and several other members of the tour. The tourists are a varied group including old college chums, a mother/daughter duo, a brother/sister couple, three sisters, a gay couple, and so forth. They quickly go to Florence where one of the group is murdered. Dotsy, of course, gets involved in solving the crime. The Captain of the carabinieri seems much to willing to let Dotsy get involved. All in all I was disappointed.

[Liese Sherwood-Fabre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dotsy Lamb's tour of Italy takes a very nasty turn when one woman in her group is found murdered in her hotel room shortly after the trip begins. For most, she would not be missed. Her barbs, complaints, and down-right meanness had not endeared her to any in the group--especially the sister who shared a room with her. But Dotsy is certain the Carabinieri are on the wrong track as they arrest and then release more than suspect.

Ms. Hudgins provides a delightful who-dun-it with an Italian flare. Having toured some of the places she describes in the book, I truly enjoyed the descriptions and colorful characters she included in her story. A great read!

[Mary · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reads like self-published tripe, starting with the main character described as an "ancient history professor," when of course it should be "professor of ancient history," unless the woman is a thousand years old.

Other complaints: its cast of characters rivals those in War and Peace and adds nothing to the story; the dialogue is trite and the abuse of action verbs off-putting.

[Bhan13 · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had seconds to run in to the library, get a book, and check it out before closing tonight. This book was on the end of the nearest shelf and was unfortunately the one I grabbed. It was so bad I didn't even get to the bottom of the first page.

[Julie P · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a cute little book - kind of confusing until you get the characters all straightened out. I did like the heroine, and I would be interested in reading more of this series. Not bad for a free Kindle book, especially if it wants me to read more.

[Pringle · Rating 1 out of 5]

The main character is annoying - she seems sort of stupid.
Contrived plot.
Silly, silly book.
I read the first half, skimmed some and then read the last chapter to see who the killer was.
I won't even remember reading this one.

[Lizzytish · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was ok, I think the author tried too hard and it kind of came across flat.

[Suew · Rating 1 out of 5]

Slow read. Too many characters and the mystery was forced

[Rita Wilson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too many characters and not enough information to really care about them.

[Katherine · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is packaged as a traditional closed-circle mystery set on a tour in Italy. About the only piece of it that is believable is that Florence, Italy is depicted as beautiful.

I read a lot of really dumb mysteries--it's kinda my thing--but even I didn't have strong enough suspension of disbelief for this book. The closed circle was too big and instead of giving the characters personality, the author tried to differentiate them by making each of them quirky in a different way, but the quirks are confined to tropes: daffy, "happy-dancing" best friend; hard-to-understand Brit; philandering man; rebellious teen... you get the gist.

The plot and action are less believable than the characters. None of the characters act or talk in believable ways, and the plot twist is frankly unbelievable. The author also makes the Carabinieri look frankly unprofessional.

Skip. Unless you want a crash course in how not to write a mystery.

[Meg Deem · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of a lark. A vacation tour in Italy with a group of strangers. Made me remember my trip to Italy with my sister. Set primarily in Florence, it was fun picturing all the spots we visited. The fact that two of the characters were named Amy and Meg made it even more relatable. Then throw in a murder or two and side trips to Pisa, Sienna and San Gimignano and you have a fun story. And don’t forget the obnoxious tourist because every great trip has one!

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This mystery is set in Italy and I enjoyed the references to places in Florence. There are a lot of characters in this book and it was a bit of an effort to keep track of all of them. The number of characters also slowed down the narrative. The main character, Dotsy, is diabetic and a fair amount of time is spent on her managing her disease which was not central to the plot. The writing was a bit uneven, but I have another of this author's works on my e-reader and will give it a try.

[Knight · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable cozy mystery, in a travel setting.

[Samantha Roof · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought that this book was really badly written and that it was corny and very judgemental. I hated it I didn't even make it through the whole book.

[Italo Italophiles · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a traditional cozy murder mystery set in Italy. You will be reminded of Agatha Christie's murder mysteries set among tourists in foreign lands, and of the more recent British television series Rosemary & Thyme about two mature women dealing with dead bodies as they landscape their way through the English countryside.

We quickly meet our protagonist, the first-person narrator, Dotsy, a mature American woman, in the airport arrivals area in Milan. The group moves to Verona then Venice and on to Florence, where the group must remain while the police attempt to solve the mystery of the murder of the obnoxious tourist, with the help of Dotsy and her sidekick, Lettie, of course.

This is a solidly written, cozy murder mystery set in Italy, that offers a voyeuristic view on a vacation there with a tour group. The group's extended stay in Florence gives the reader a different perspective on the city than most tourists get, showing the social problems in a city inundated by tourists each year, and struggling with the European wide challenge of dealing with a roaming poor population of Roma.

Any negatives? Well, I missed getting Dotsy's first impression of Venice, and finding out how her flirtation with the policeman ended. And pretty much all the Italian in the book is incorrect, although the English is well-edited with only a handful of typos mainly to do with punctuation. I thought the names of the tour group members could have been more distinctive to help the reader keep them apart. And Dotsy shows very poor judgment at times, like when she throws a knife out of a hotel window into a crowded square.

But on the whole, this is a fine first entry in a series that looks set to continue, with each book having Dotsy deal with murder victims in a different country.

Please read my full and illustrated review at Italophile Book Reviews.
http://italophilebookreviews.blogspot...

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

For starters, the only reason I initially picked up this book was because the cover looked pretty cool (it's not the one pictured above. There was a gargoyle in a fountain). After reading the back though, I figured I'd give it a shot.

I didn't really find myself left guessing as to who the murder could be, but then again, the characters that were killed were either not fully developed and not a huge part of the story, OR they were not likeable, so I didn't really care what happened to them. It isn't one of those mysteries where you just "have to know" who the killer is. I would have liked to know what happened to the romance that was set up in the story (without making it a strictly romance novel), but that was never definitively dealt with or ended or anything like that. I highly doubt that any further books will include this particular romance either, unless the author plans on continually sending Dotsy back to Italy and having people get murdered. That would get pretty old, pretty fast.

All in all, I would have liked a little more character development for most of the characters as well as the budding relationship/ love interest issue to be handled a little more concretely, but it was a decent book none the less. Perfect for a quick beach read. I mean, hell! I read it in a little over 24 hours on my trip to and from NYC.

[Anne Beardsley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A history professor (who has only a passing interest in history, and is much more into gossip about the people in her tour group she just met) solves a murder mystery.

I...rather liked it. The main character was not pushy or always right, and the author was not in love with her main character (a fatal flaw). The mystery was fairly well crafted.

I felt that the details could have been brought out better: not only was there only a passing sense of being in Italy most of the book, there was little excitement among the group to be in Italy. The history professor spends about a total of 5 hours in history museums (you could spend days in the average Italian history museum, even as an amateur), and seems to feel only a bit of puzzlement. The one time I felt a gleam of genuine enthusiasm from the character for her career was when she talked about doubling attendance in a class. Her lack of interest and speculation on her own bit of a romance gave me the uneasy feeling that she was using the poor man...but I rather liked the way he was portrayed, and wanted to see the romance continue.
The feelings of a parent seemed real. The diabetes seemed real.
And it's a first novel. Maybe I should read the next and hope.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Friends Dotsy and Lettie are on a tour of Italy when one of the women with them is murdered. A hotel thief is the first suspect, but Dotsy, a history teacher and divorced mother of five, is not so sure. But if he is cleared, the next likely suspect is Lettie's good friend, the victim's sister. While many people found the dead woman obnoxious, it should take more than that to turn a normal person into a murderer. But when Dotsy turns from motive to opportunity, the problem is even harder. There must be something that she's missing. Great descriptions, especially of Florence.

[Jeanie Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable story with good characters. I especially liked when the sidekick Letty said or did something really on point since she is usually too concrete to "get" things. This book has an old fashioned feel but that is okay for me. As in many cozy mysteries, there are a few too many red herrings, but Dotsy sees the potential in the true motive as well as the other possible motives almost from the beginning. I like when the heroine has enough sense to see the obvious from the clues that we see. I will be reading more from this series, it just won't be up with JD Robb.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice little cozy mystery. I originally picked this up because of the price, but I enjoy the travel aspect, too. The main character, Dotsy Lamb, a junior college history professor, goes on vacation. Her friend, Lettie, goes with her. Then a horrible, unliked member of the tour is murdered. Their tour of Italy changes as the police search out the killer. Dotsy spends her time trying to figure it out, too. Nice little mystery with some travel tourist spots. Interestingly written and easy to read. Worth the read.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dotsy works for me as an amateur sleuth, though the theme of being dumped by a spouse in middle age (another character suffers the same fate, only worse) is rather overdone. Also, I had trouble keeping track of the many characters on the tour, but that might've been easier reading the print edition. Connie Terwilliger did a good job with the narration, so I'm sorry that she doesn't read the rest of the series.

[Rachel Cotterill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love to travel even more than I love reading mysteries, so I was happy to discover the Dotsy Lamb series of travel mysteries - and even happier that the first one was free on Kindle. This book didn't disappoint. Although I guessed most of the solution, it was an enjoyable read, the lead character is likeable, and there are nice little touches of Italian backdrop throughout.

[Kyrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I confess to choosing this book because of the similarity to MC Beaton's titles.

It was pretty good. There were a few too many characters, but it was easy to weed out the extraneous ones.

There was a bit of fun punning, some historical and touristy info, and fair amount about diabetics.

I'd read another one of Hudgins books if she writes one.