The Dead Past

The Felicity Grove Mysteries, Book 1

By: Tom Piccirilli

Narrated by: Daniel Dorse

Welcome to Felicity Grove....

This upstate New York village is as small as it is peaceful. But somehow, Jonathan Kendrick's eccentric grandma, Anna, always manages to find trouble. Crime, scandal, you name it...this wheel-chair-bound senior citizen is involved. So, when the phone rings at four a. m. in Jonathan's New York City apartment, he knows to expect some kind of dilemma. But Anna's outdone herself this time. She's stumbled across a dead body in her trash can.

©1999 Tom Piccirilli (P)2018 David N. Wilson

Cozy Mystery

The protagonist comes home because his only living relative, his granny, Ann, asked him to come. A dead body was found on her land and she wants him to assist in finding out what happened. He complies, he returns to his home town where he gets along with the deputy and despises the sheriff. He meets both new people & old school chums as he attempts to resolve the mystery.

Tom Piccirilli has a very distinct writing style. He is humorous. His protagonist do a lot of ruminating. His dialogue is quite natural. Combine all these and his characters become well fleshed out.

The narrator is skilled & gifted. He does a nice granny’s (Ann’s) voice. However, his voice sounds older than the protagonist who is around 29yrs. old.

Also, if hearing impaired, Daniel Dorse’s voice is slightly difficult to hear on the highways. The frequency is close to highway sounds so raising the volume on hearing aids or speakers doesn’t help much. His voice is very relaxing, warm & velvety. Quite nice in a quite environment.

Does the past influence the future?

This is the first book I have listened or read by this author and I found it quite interesting. Anna is the wheel chair bound 68 year old grandmother of Jonathan. Jonathan is a big city book store owner specializing in old first editions of books. When Jonathan gets a call from his grandmother in the early morning hours he knows something is wrong. With lots of suspense and second guessing of who the guilty party is, leads to a great beginning to a new series. I enjoy the rapport between Jonathan and Anna, they are much closer than family members sometimes are as they have gone through horrible things together. I will be looking up more books by Tom Piccirilli. I received a free code for this book from Audiobooks Unleashed to listen to on Audible. This review is my own honest opinion.

Charming

I received this book for free. I am voluntarily posting this review and any opinions expressed herein are my own.

I am actually closer to 3.5 than four stars so I gave this a four as I did not think it deserved a three-star rating.

This is a cozy mystery - having all of the elements of a cozy - small town, nosey main characters, incompetent law enforcement, etc. At times this cozy is downright charming, has some touching moments between the main characters [grandmother and grandson], with some very humorous/witty moments. However, the author also threw in a lot of events - and not just backstory on the characters but other cases which the MC and his grandmother previously solved - summed up in a few short sentences or a brief paragraph. It happened so often that I ended up checking several times whether this was actually the first book in the series as I felt that I was missing something - I wasn't, this is the first book.

The narrator, Daniel Dorse, does a good job but narrates slowly. I ended up speeding up the narration.

It Was Good

I enjoyed this little cozy mystery, it had good characters and story line, I especially liked the dialogue between Anna [Jonathan's Grandma] and the sheriff. Daniel Dorse did a fine job narrating. I received this audio book free for my voluntary review, Thank You!

Good Story

Johnathan and his grandmother Anna solving a murder together. It is on her land, a trash can. A good cozy mystery with some humor. Given audio for my voluntary review and my honest opinion