This page is for tropes which have appeared in Aunt Dimity.
For the rest:
- Actually Not a Vampire: Early in Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter, five-year-old twins Rob and Will see someone standing in the woods near their riding school who looks like a vampire they saw in a classmate's vampire comic book. Lori checks out their story, convinced they saw someone, and finds footprints and a scrap of red silk the riding instructor missed. It turns out to be Charlotte DuCaral, a neighbour who wears the cloak, along with zinc oxide sun block and red lipstick, who was in the woods brooding over her lost love, who promised to elope with her years before but didn't arrive.
- Adam and/or Eve: Adam Chase, the handsome military historian Lori meets in Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil, could be said to be "from the ground": he's the grandson of Claire Byrd, the ghost of Wyrdhurst Hall.
- Afterlife Antechamber: Aunt Dimity seems to occupy an area like this, especially when she's communicating with Lori. In some instances, notably in Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea, she writes of making inquiries among other spirits who have passed beyond, giving the impression that said spirits aren't immediately available for consultation.
- An Aesop: Most of the standards get covered, and generally more than one person learns something in the course of each book.
- The Alleged Car: Lori's secondhand Morris Mini, which she retains for a time despite having sufficient wealth to replace it with something much flashier. She even gets a second one later, in addition to the silver Mercedes and the yellow Range Rover, which she uses for short trips without the twins. Justified by her poor driving.
- Alliterative Name: William Arthur Willis (Senior and Junior), Sir Williston Willis, Wendy Walker, Sir Percy Pelham, Deirdre and Declan Donovan, Tony Thames, Lady Barbara Booker and Mikhail Markov.
- All Girls Like Ponies: Nell Harris first learned to ride on a visit to some of the English Willises in Yorkshire. She expertly drops hints and gets a horse for her birthday (named Rocinante). Later, her parents Derek and Emma Harris start a riding school. This comes in handy, since Lori's sons Will and Rob also grow to be horse-mad (parodied/gender-inverted/take your pick). Another of the Harrises' early pupils is Chloe, the daughter of a widow for whom Lori tries her hand at matchmaking in Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin.
- Amateur Sleuth: Lori is this, as is (was) Dimity. Lori has some knowledge of old books and manuscripts (which does come in handy from time to time), but she inherited a fortune from Dimity and so no longer must work for a living. When not sleuthing, she oversees a charitable foundation and keeps house for her husband and sons. In life, Dimity wasn't a sleuth either; she did clerical work during the war, volunteered at a daycare centre for war widows and their children, and ran her charitable foundation—when she wasn't gardening or writing letters.
- Ambiguously Gay: Grant and Charles aren't mentioned as gay, but they show all the signs. Their careers are in the art world, specifically in restoration, framing, and appraisals. On first moving to their cottage in Finch, they compete in the village flower show and win. They have a pair of small pet dogs named for artists. They routinely go to London for the theatre. They're just as much the Gossipy Hens as any of their neighbours; they share a table with Lori at Sally Pyne's cafe to watch Amelia move into her cottage. The morning after their cottage is broken into in Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch, Charles is prostrate on a chaise and fortifying himself with alcohol, and Grant offers a drink to Lori before preparing one for himself.
- Amusing Injuries: Many varieties throughout the books. In Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree, Lori is securing Rob into his booster seat in the car when Emma recounts a series of rumours regarding the identity of Willis Sr.'s mysterious houseguest; seeming to forget where she was and what she was doing, Lori reacts by straightening up abruptly and hitting her head on the car roof. See also The Pratfall below.
- And I'm the Queen of Sheba: Likely shoutouts to Dorothy Parker:
- In Aunt Dimity and the Duke, when Syd Bishop scolds Emma Porter for being mad at Derek and she starts to deny it, Syd cuts her off saying, "And I'm the queen of Romania."
- From Lori Shepherd in Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday: when Emma tells Lori that her husband of ten years is actually a peer, Lori says, "Your husband is Viscount Hailesham. Of course he is. And I am Marie of Roumania."
- Asshole Victim: Prunella Hooper so alienated the residents of Finch with her malicious gossip and outright lies that no one seems to mourn her death very much. It also means that many of the residents had a motive to kill her, and they are suspects in her death. It's somewhat anticlimactic to learn her death was accidental, but also in keeping with this trope that the witness to the accident, Mr. Barlow, didn't report it at the time.
- Aura Vision: Finch's resident Wiccan Miranda Morrow says she reads auras; she says this ability showed her that Nicholas Fox, Lilian Bunting's nephew, was a police officer. In Aunt Dimity Goes West, local Colorado psychic Amanda Barrow says much the same and actually sees the ghost of Cyril Pennyfeather standing behind Lori in her shop.
- Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: When Calvin Malvern describes his King Wlifrid's Faire he specifically says the point of it is to enjoy a fantasy, rather than a stickler-for-detail re-enactment. To that end, he encourages the residents to attend in costume, and lets it be known that anything vaguely like medieval- or Renaissance-era clothing will do. Lori and her neighbours quickly get in the spirit, doing library research, taking one of Sally Pyne's sewing classes, or hiring costumes from a theatrical supplier. Even Bill dons an ensemble from Calvin's stores that he calls a "cool medieval dude" outfit; Lori is particularly taken with the way he fills his tights.
- Awful Truth: In the dénouement of Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday, Derek's cousin Simon and his father finally tell him that his mother died of cancer, and that she wanted it kept from him (Derek was seven at the time) because the disease and its treatment had a drastic effect on her appearance. The Earl says: "She lost her hair, her fingernails, her teeth. Her skin turned gray, her body shriveled. You were her darling child, the only one she would ever have.. She didn't want you to remember her that way. She wouldn't let me tell you...." Derek grew up believing his father had alienated his mother ("My mother spent the last year of her life in London because my father was a heartless swine. I vowed then and there that I would never be like him."). He took the dismissal of his beloved nanny who showed signs of insanity and was having an affair with the Earl's valet as further evidence of his father's cruel nature, and he changed his name and avoided his father for twenty years.
- Backup from Otherworld: Dimity helps Lori get rid of an unwelcome visitor (Dr. Evan Fleischer, an obnoxious college classmate) who invites himself to her cottage. She literally slams the door in his face, makes the cottage turn strikingly cold when he enters anyway, fills the living room with smoke from the fireplace, and causes him to break a tooth on one of Lori's oatmeal cookies (which "contained nothing more tooth-threatening than some chewy raisins.")
- Bad Liar:
- Lori is most successful at avoiding issues by not mentioning them at all than by telling a lie. In Aunt Dimity: Detective, she jokingly asks Nicholas Fox to teach her to play poker, since he so much better at concealing his feelings than she is.
- In Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince, curator Mile Craven acts suspiciously when Lori and Bree ask after his former employee Amanda Pickering; his gaze drops and his chatty demeanor abruptly disappears. His discomfiture is related to his inability to keep a secret (see below).
- Barsetshire: Most of the books take place in and around the Cotswold village of Finch, with Upper Deeping as the nearest market town and Oxford being the nearest major city.
- Battleaxe Nurse: Willis Sr.'s housekeeper Deirdre is a mild comic version of this in Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince. Early in the book, she bars all visitors to the house (including Lori's cabin-feverish sons) when her employer has a severe head cold. Later, Bree recounts a series of phone messages to Lori, including these two: "Deirdre Donovan rang. She's given William the all-clear to attend church on Sunday. William rang. He will attend church on Sunday, with or without Deirdre Donovan's all-clear."
- Big Fancy House: Notably, Penford Hall, seat of the Duke of Penford in Aunt Dimity and the Duke; Hailesham Park, the seat of the Earl of Elstyn and the setting for Aunt Dimity Takes a Holiday; and Dundrillin Castle, Sir Percy's Scottish island retreat in Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea. Lori and Bree visit a series of them in Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince.
- Blackmail:
- Willis Sr. assists his English cousins in confronting a blackmailer in Aunt Dimity's Good Deed. An incompetent physician learns of both the family's literal skeleton in the closet and some accounting errors in the family law practice that might be construed as embezzlement, coupled with some actual embezzlement by a now-deceased in-law. Willis Sr. also informs Scotland Yard, and a Chief Inspector is present at the dénouement.
- In Aunt Dimity: Detective, Prunella Hooper is revealed to have been blackmailing Peggy Taxman over the son she had out of wedlock and gave up when she was fifteen.
- Blanket Fort: In Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea, Will and Rob build "a complicated complex of sea caves for their seal pups, using blankets, tables, model cars, knights in armor, plastic dinosaurs, and a variety of other items seldom observed in the wild by the Seal Conservation Trust but which my sons deemed essential to a baby seal's happiness."
- Blitz Evacuees: In Aunt Dimity Digs In, several of the current residents of Finch are revealed to have first come to the village as these during WWII, and they've returned there later in their lives because of the pleasant memories and the feeling of sanctuary the place gave them.
- Bookcase Passage: There's one in the library of Wyrdhurst Hall in Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil, and it's triggered by removing a book from the shelf. The book on the trigger mechanism is a children's book, and the passage eventually leads to the nursery room where the daughter of the house was imprisoned by her father.
- Book Ends: Two examples:
- Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea opens with Lori fielding balls while her sons play cricket (since she can do little else in the game). At the end of the book, Lori speaks of rejoining her sons in their backyard play, but says she can bowl a wicket clean nine times out of ten. Her throwing ability was so useful against Abaddon that she vows to practice every chance she gets. "Just in case."
- Aunt Dimity Slays the Dragon opens on a boring committee meeting, where the villagers are planning for another summer of events, which promise to be just like last year's (and the year before that...). The book closes with Lori and her neighbours actually looking forward to the next committee meeting, since their fun-yet-hectic renaissance summer is over and Guy Fawkes Day is fast approaching.
- Bookworm: Lori has some expertise in rare books and used to work for an academic expert. She is often drawn to the libraries in houses where she is staying. She is even asked to assess the books in an old house in Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil, and she gives Jamie a mini-lecture on the varieties of bookbindings and endpapers in Aunt Dimity: Snowbound.
- Brawn Hilda: Henrietta Harcourt, the DuCaral household cook in Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter, is described as physically massive and she proceeds to haul a wet and shivering Kit and Lori into her kitchen. She also physically took them to the scullery, helped them clean up in an experience Lori likens to "taking a ride in a spin dryer," and drags them into the kitchen to sit and eat while their clothes dry.
- Broken Bird: A couple of these in the series:
- Early on, Lori herself is somewhat subtly depicted this way. Mostly this comes out in her retellings of the "Aunt Dimity" stories in the introductory book. Under the terms of the will, Willis Sr. has her recount several of the stories, first to identify herself as the rightful heir, then as proof that she's researching the correspondence Dimity Westwood and her mother Beth left behind. She begins to notice that the versions she recalls have some telling differences from the tales as originally told in the letters—differences which reflect her own bitterness over her divorce and poverty, the robbery of her humble apartment, and the loss of her mother while she was living in another city.
- This is Bree Pym's Backstory as it unfolds in Aunt Dimity Down Under. Her grandfather recently died, her abusive alcoholic father went on one last bender, and she fled the situation, only to find her long-lost mother had remarried and started another family (in part to forget her own sufferings at the hands of Ed Pym). She finds and quits a couple of jobs, gets several tattoos and numerous piercings, and is so upset when the tattoo artist advises her to slow down she trashes his studio and breaks his glasses. Of herself, she tells Lori:
"Ex-cons have trouble adjusting to life after prison. I disappointed my teachers by not going to university. I haven't been able to hold on to a job since I left Takapuna. I attacked Roger for no good reason, and I expect I'll do the same to Holly. I don't know how to behave around normal people." She pressed her hands to her eyes. "I've given up hope of learning." - Burn the Witch!: In Aunt Dimity and the Village Witch, as the villagers get involved in the story of the seventeenth-century "witch" Margaret Redfern, the spectre of this is discussed, including the popular belief that the "swimming" of witches, was a Morton's Fork. The vicar's wife Lilian Bunting also describes other methods of interrogation/torture, condemns the very idea of torturing other people for such specious reasons, and is visibly distressed at the prospect that the villagers will learn that such was Margaret Redfern's fate.
- But I Digress: The ghost of Cyril Pennyfeather does this in his conversation with Lori and Dimity in Aunt Dimity Goes West. Cyril is explaining how he calmed Lori and Dimity while going unnoticed by either of them:"Good grief," I said softly. "You made my nightmare go away."It would be more accurate to say that I created an atmosphere of tranquility and security in which you found it easier to sleep, and sleep, saith the Bard, is the balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast. Macbeth Act two, Scene two. But I digress.
- Cabin Fever: Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince opens with a February "curse" seeming to conspire to bring this about for Lori and her sons: a cold snap settles over the area, the heating system at the boys' school breaks down and the needed parts are in Helsinki, the pipes freeze and burst at Emma and Derek's riding school, and the boys' grandfather and schoolmates all come down with a severe head cold. Lori welcomes Bree's arrival on her doorstep to help her entertain her bored twins.
- Cannot Keep a Secret:
- Lori again; this trope is frequently invoked and only partly Played for Laughs. This trait is one of those that make her suited to the village gossip hive that is Finch. It's also the reason Bill doesn't tell her where he's sending her and the kids to escape the stalker at the opening of Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea. As it turns out, she's not the one to give that game away; Sir Percy makes an airy remark about taking her over Gretna Green with the stalker literally hiding in the bushes, so he knows they're going to Scotland and follows them there.
- Miles Craven, the curator and caretaker of Skeaping Manor in Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince explains his reaction to hearing Amanda Pickering's name this way. His friend Alexei Markov confirms this, "Miles is hopeless at keeping secrets."
- Caught in the Rain: This happens early in Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil. Having just escaped from her Range Rover when a stretch of road washes out, Lori stumbles through the storm to a cottage occupied by handsome young military historian Adam Chase, where she collapses. She awakens to find herself and her host naked in his bed before the fireplace.
- Cerebus Rollercoaster: The series as a whole can be characterized this way. The novels have many elements of comedy and even farce, and some of the solutions to the mysteries are simple and largely non-threatening. In other portions, tragic and horrific elements appear, and the answers (e.g. terrorism, suicide, survivor's guilt, murder) are far more grim. Interestingly, the opposites tend to reinforce one another: Characters can take things so seriously that they jump to dire conclusions that are dispelled by relatively innocuous explanations, and everyone has a good laugh afterwards. Alternatively, they can go blithely forward in a misplaced confidence that nothing bad will happen, until something does. There are additional benefits in avoiding saccharine extremes and keeping the audience guessing.
- Character Title: As seen in the list of titles above.
- Close-Knit Community: The village of Finch.
- Closet Geek: Retiree George Wetherhead is initially presented as this over his model trains; he's so shy and retiring about his hobby that when Lori first comes to his door, he seizes her and pulls her inside his cottage so as to avoid having the impending train whistle blast audibly outside his home. Eventually, he is persuaded to show his collection to paying customers, first for a village festival and later on a scheduled basis.
- Coincidental Accidental Disguise: Played for Laughs in the end of Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter: when Lori sees sun-sensitive neighbour Charlotte DuCaral wearing a red-lined black cloak, red lipstick, and zinc oxide sunscreen, she screams and evidently faints, as she isn't too clear on how she got from answering a door to sitting in a chair in an interior room. Her sons had first noticed this person while they were riding their ponies and thought it was Rendor, a character in a vampire comic book brought to school by a classmate.
- Comedy: The series makes frequent use of Comedy Tropes (found throughout this list), as well as playing other tropes for their humour value; they include physical comedy, jokes, misunderstandings, and occasional elements of farce. At the same time, the books also follow the old definition of comedy (as in Shakespeare's comedies and Dante's The Divine Comedy) in that the stories have happy endings, despite the suffering and mistakes that have gone before.
- Contamination Situation: In Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince, Lady Barbara Booker relates how her childhood friend left his stuffed bear at her house the day before he came down with polio (this was in the 1920s, decades before any vaccine). She innocently tried to visit Mikhail to return the bear, and her father "went spare" and gave her a severe spanking. Although she was kept informed of his progress in recovery, "Basha" and "Misha" did not see one another again until Lori ad Bree's investigation prompted Barbara to pay an unannounced visit to Mikhail's family home.
- Cool House: The Aerie, the Colorado cabin in Aunt Dimity Goes West, is one of these. It seems to have grown organically from the mountainside, and it features a variety of decks and windows in many shapes (including portholes and stars). The place also has a variety of luxuries (sauna, hot tub, arcade game room, outdoor firepit, indoor fireplaces, and so on). One of the characters calls it the owner's treehouse, explicitly stating that he was forbidden a treehouse while growing up and used his wealth as an adult to live the dream.
- Cool Old Lady: Lady Barbara Booker in Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince. She declines the use of her title, saying, "I've never been much of a lady." She is openly atheist and spent much of her life travelling wherever she pleased. Nouveau Riche neighbor Gracie Thames calls her "a corker" and says of her "She's too classy to think about class." In her old age, she disregards doctor's orders to be in a room with her books (too dusty) and a fire (too ashy). Inviting Lori and Bree in, she says, "Bung your bags and jackets there and bung your bums anywhere you please." After that, she gives them inside dope on how to enter the Markov house (Mirfield) as well as a master key she persuaded a young Mikhail to steal when they were children.
- Could Say It, But...: Late in Aunt Dimity: Detective, there's a meeting to sort out the events around Prunella Hooper's death. After Sally Pine insults her paganism for the second time during that meeting, local witch Miranda Morrow says, "I'll never tell a soul that I saw you that morning, coming out of Crabtree Cottage."
- *Crack!* "Oh, My Back!": Sally Pyne, the owner and operator of the tearoom in Finch, secretly takes up exercise and her joints respond this way. Very much Played for Laughs, especially since her clearly reduced mobility gives away her "secret" to her neighbours.
- Crazy Homeless People: This one gets considerable play in Aunt Dimity's Christmas. The villagers' reactions to the news that Lori and her family had a collapsed vagrant airlifted to hospital range from incredulity to hostility. Lori herself also recounts how she is often uncomfortable when confronted by homeless people (having so nearly been one herself); of the villagers, she says, "I was the last person on earth qualified to judge my neighbors. I had too much in common with them." Lori and Fr. Bright also have an argument over the man's sanity, especially as the evidence of his recent past suggests he has done highly unusual things and may have been committed to a psychiatric hospital; the priest later admits, "Where there was goodness, I chose to see madness." Of course, Rev. Bunting chastises the villagers for their attitude as well.
- Crappy Holidays: Bill expresses this sentiment at the beginning of Aunt Dimity's Christmas. He points out that he's had to attend fifteen parties in ten days, as well as make multiple crowded shopping trips and go into the woods for greenery and a tree—and Christmas is still two weeks away.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: An off-screen death in Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil: Josiah Byrd imprisoned his daughter in an attic room after she fell in love, maintained contact with the forbidden suitor, and became pregnant. Her father allowed her to die of birth complications, and the nurse had to smuggle out the infant girl to keep him from killing her as well. Lori senses the ghost leaves her when she and her companions find the room; apparently the experience was so traumatic the ghost can't or won't return to the room.
- Crusty Caretaker: Catchpole in Aunt Dimity: Snowbound. Also an Old Retainer for the previous owner who can fill in some of the details of Lucasta DeClerke's life.
