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Agatha Awards

Jeanne M. Dams, who received a master's degree from Notre Dame in 1970, won an Agatha Award for best first traditional mystery in 1995 for The Body in the Transept. That novel, and three that followed, feature amateur sleuth Dorothy Martin, an American widow living in England. The star of the popular series has been called "a modern Miss Marple" by one reviewer.

In her latest mystery, Death in Lacquer Red, Dams has moved the scene from modern-day England to turn-of-the-century South Bend, Indiana. The new sleuth is Hilda Johansson, a Swedish immigrant who works as a housemaid for the wealthy, real-life Studebaker family, owners -- at that time -- of a wagon-building business. (Later, of course, they made cars.)

Called a "gentle whodunit" by Booklist, the mystery is replete with period details. At one point in the story, Hilda walks to Notre Dame, where she talks to renowned scientist Father John Zahm. All those Catholics scare her a little: "They would try to convert her to their idolatrous ways," she thinks before her visit. "Or they would take her prisoner and lock her up in a convent until her bones bleached. She had heard of such things."

The life of a housemaid, who must be seen but not heard, and the cultural and religious prejudices against all manner of immigrants, all work for Dam's stated goal, to capture the flavor of a time and place.

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