Shirley Damsgaard

Ophelia And Abby — (2005-2009) Publisher: Bewitched meets Murder She Wrote in this delightful new cozy mystery series featuring Ophelia Jensen, small town librarian and reluctant psychic, and her grandmother Abby, a benevolent witch. Thirty something Ophelia Jensen wants to live a quiet life as a small town librarian. She's created a comfortable existence with her kooky, colorful grandmother Abby, and if it were up to her, they could live out their days — along with Ophelia's dog Lady and cat Queenie — in peace and quiet. But, to Ophelia's dismay, she and Abby aren't a typical grandmother/granddaughter duo. She possesses psychic powers, and Abby is a kindly witch. And while Ophelia would do anything to dismiss her gift — harboring terrible guilt after her best friend was killed and she was unable to stop it — threatening events keep popping up, forcing her to tap into her powers of intuition. To make matters worse, a strange — yet devastatingly attractive — man is hanging around Ophelia's library, and no matter how many times she tells him she's sworn off men forever, he persists. Soon this handsome newcomer reveals he's following a lead on a local drug ring, and then a dead body shows up right in Abby's backyard. And much as Ophelia would like to put away her spells forever, she and Abby must use their special powers to keep themselves, and others, out of harm's way.

Witch Way to Murder

I like mysteries, and I like fantasy, and so I'm always in the market for a mystery with fantasy elements! Shirley Damsgaard's Witch Way to Murder is a cute, fun addition to this hybrid subgenre. It has a few flaws, but I liked it enough that I plan to read the next Ophelia and Abby novel as soon as I get my hands on it.

Witch Way to Murder is set in the small town of Summerset, Iowa. Damsgaard sets a great scene; The town, the weather, and the people all feel "real."

The protagonist is Ophelia, a librarian with an unwanted psychic gift. She can be standoffish to the point of rudeness, which usually annoys me, but I was able to stick with this character, and I liked her in the end. Maybe it's because the reasons for her standoffishness are painfully clear. I sympathized with her even when she was driving me crazy. Her witchy grandmother, Abby, is a delight. My favorite character, though, was Ophelia's assistant, Darci. A gorgeous blonde, she's constantly being underestimated because of her looks, and she's a master at turning people's assumptions to her advantage. Every scene she's in, she steals.

The plot is interesting and more complicated than it looks on the surface, and it held my attention as Ophelia and Co. gradually unraveled all its tangled threads. There's also a hint of bittersweet romance, but not so much that it overshadows the plot.

Witch Way to Murder would have scored a higher rating if it weren't for a couple of my old pet peeves rearing their heads: spotty copy editing and overly-expository "infodump" dialogue. Still, I thought it was entertaining, and as I mentioned above, I definitely plan on continuing with the series. —Kelly Lasiter

The Trouble With Witches

After reading Witch Way to Murder, I found myself craving another Ophelia and Abby mystery and went to the library for my "fix." They didn't have book two, Charmed to Death, but they did have book three, The Trouble With Witches. I decided, what the heck, you can usually read these cozy mystery series out of order anyway. Often, authors will only allude vaguely to events of previous books in case you're reading them out of sequence.

Well, I figured out pretty quickly that Shirley Damsgaard doesn't do that. I have now thoroughly spoiled myself for Charmed to Death until enough time passes that I forget the killer's name. But The Trouble With Witches was a lot of fun anyway. The plot revolves around Ophelia and Abby's investigation of a psychic-research organization that may or may not be a cult responsible for the disappearance of a teenage girl.

Whatever happened in Charmed to Death must have been good for Ophelia. She still has trouble sometimes making herself be sociable, but she's not the rude, standoffish Ophelia of Witch Way to Murder. She lets more people past her armor now and it makes her more interesting (and much less irritating).

If there's anything about Ophelia that bugged me this time around, it's that sometimes she needed a good whack with the clue stick. She's sometimes incredibly oblivious when the plot needs her to be. There are two characters who, it's said time and time again, have exactly the same outlandish hair color. Yet when Ophelia finds a dead body with hair of that color, she jumps to the conclusion that Person A is dead when it's just as likely that Person B is the one who bit the dust.

The central red herring, though, works really well; I was suspicious of the wrong person until the very end.

I'll be reading more in this series, even if I do need to wait a while before backtracking to Charmed to Death! —Kelly Lasiter

The Seventh Witch

In The Seventh Witch, Ophelia and Abby travel to the Appalachians to visit family, and learn that events of decades ago continue to echo through the present. Along the way, Ophelia learns a lot about herself and the future she wants to build.

Unlike previous Ophelia and Abby books, The Seventh Witch is not primarily focused on the “whodunit” aspect. There’s a murder, but the question is not so much who committed the crime but how and why. The question of “how” comes about because there are no obvious signs of foul play, leading Ophelia to wonder whether curses might be more powerful than she realized. Investigating “why” opens up a Pandora’s Box of secrets from the past. Ophelia must discover the truth behind a rift within the family and a feud between her family and another.

Ophelia also examines her life, weighing it against the possible futures she sees when she looks at her grandmother and aunts. She has always pushed people away, but in The Seventh Witch, she begins to wonder whether she really wants to live a solitary life like her Great-Aunt Mary. The reappearance of a man from her past helps bring these musings to the forefront.

I enjoyed The Seventh Witch. It has the kind of tangled-family-history plotline that I just love, and the setting is beautiful. Damsgaard does a great job of describing Ophelia and Abby’s ancestral home. The clearing with the stone circle sounds just as gorgeous as it looks on the cover. And I especially loved the climactic scene involving the seven witches, though it could have been longer.

The Seventh Witch is probably the last Ophelia and Abby book for some time to come, though not necessarily the last one ever. As a stopping point in the series, it works really well. The ending leaves Ophelia in a satisfactory spot, but there are plenty of directions Shirley Damsgaard could still go with the series if she does continue it.

I don’t recommend starting with this one — you’ll be lost — but if you’ve missed some books along the way, like I have, you won’t have much trouble catching up. You also won’t find too many spoilers for the earlier mysteries. —Kelly Lasiter