📱📖 Read on Kobo | 📃 328 pages
⏱ Duration: 4 hours
Published: September 1, 2026
Genre: Cozy Mystery
🏷️ Publisher name: Kanga Press
ARC by Voracious Readers
Book Blurb:
Young military widow Dotty L. Sayers just wants to take life one day at a time, with her late husband’s black Labrador, Banff, for company. Needing financial security, she accepts a temporary job at a Cotswold auction house, only to discover a dead body inside a grandfather clock. The police focus on jealousy and blackmail, but Dotty sets out to prove her husband’s ex-wife is innocent. As she uncovers her colleagues’ secrets and the police brush off her findings, time is running short. Can a novice detective convince them before it runs out?
Let’s talk … murder!!!
Hour Is Come is a charming start to the Dotty Sayers Antique Mystery series, and I really enjoyed it.
Let me start with a detail I loved: naming the heroine Dotty L. Sayers is a clever nod to Dorothy L. Sayers, the Golden Age queen of the British whodunit. It’s a wink for mystery fans and a fitting name for an amateur sleuth.
Dotty is a young war widow who has spent her life dominated, first by her father and then by her much older husband. Now, suddenly free, she lands her first job as a receptionist at a Cotswold auction house. What I loved most is that the author doesn’t turn her into a bold, fearless heroine overnight. Dotty starts out timid, and her confidence grows slowly and believably as she finds her footing. It made her feel real, and I was rooting for her the whole way.
The story, the characters, the murder, and the resolution all worked well for me. The mystery kept me engaged, and the discovery of a body inside a grandfather clock is a wonderfully fitting hook for an antiques-themed cozy.
My one real frustration was the structure. Nearly every chapter ends on a spike of suspense, but the next chapter jumps to a different scene instead of picking up where the last one left off. I found this broke the continuity and pulled me out of the story more than once. It’s a matter of pacing preference, and it didn’t spoil the book for me, but it did bother me.
If you enjoy gentle, character-driven whodunits with British village charm, this is well worth picking up.
Would I recommend it?
Hour Is Come is a gentle, character-driven start to the Dotty Sayers Antique Mystery series, and I’m glad I read it. Dotty begins timid and grows into her confidence at a believable pace, which kept me rooting for her. A body inside a grandfather clock is a hook that suits an antiques cozy perfectly. The chapter-to-chapter jumps annoyed me, but the mystery held. If you like British village charm and a sleuth who isn’t fearless from page one, add this one to your TBR.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Keep the Clock Ticking
- Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers
Since Dotty’s name is a nod to her, start where the Golden Age whodunit queen began with Lord Peter Wimsey. - Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton
If you liked the Cotswold setting and a woman finding her feet in a village full of secrets, this is the one to try next. - Antiques Roadkill by Barbara Allan
Another antiques-flavored cozy, for when you want more dealers, auctions and a nosy amateur sleuth. - The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
Classic British village charm with an amateur sleuth the police tend to underestimate, which is very Dotty. - The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Gentle, character-first and funny, for readers who care more about who is solving the case than how fast.
Time to Weigh In
Be honest: do you get annoyed when a chapter ends on a cliffhanger and the next one wanders off to a different scene? Or do you like being kept waiting? Also, what’s the strangest place a body has turned up in a cozy you’ve read? Tell me in the comments.
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