Dimity Westwood is as dead as ever, but she's still on hand- -a reassuring presence whose words appear magically in a blue notebook--to offer counsel and consolation to her legatee Lori Shepherd when fighting breaks out between Dr. Adrian Culver, the Oxford archeologist who's commandeered St. George's schoolhouse for his digging detritus, and village empress Peggy Kitchen, who'd been promised the schoolhouse for the Harvest Festival to put Finch back in touch with its ancient customs. St. George's vicar, Rev. Theodore Bunting, could have Adrian packing in a minute if he could only show him Disappointments in Devling, the pamphlet in which Bunting's Victorian predecessor, Rev. Cornelius Gladwell, confessed to having salted Scrag End field with archaeological artifacts in protest of an earlier dig. But someone has pinched the vicar's copy from his study, so he asks Lori if she can round up another of the only nine copies in existence before the conflict escalates into something worse. No fear. Though Lori, newly delivered of twins, will confront witches and long-buried romances, rumors of ghosts and aliens, nothing will go wrong among the dramatis personae--all of them as carefully matched as the pieces of a good tea service--that can't be mended by Dimity's advice, a little tactful conversation, and some of Sally Pyne's lemonbars. Atherton's placid fourth (Aunt Dimity's Good Deed, 1996, etc.) confirms her status as the coziest cozy of them all. (Mystery Guild selection; author tour)
