Miss Dimple Disappears: A Mystery

3.5 stars, looking forward to reading the others!

An engaging enough mystery centered on a small town fully involved in World War II and all its privations and preparations. Miss Dimple is a much-loved local school teacher, and her disappearance starts off this story, which has a few other side plots to keep your interest.

I read the most recent book in this series first <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/17934488.Miss_Dimple_Picks_a_Peck_of_Trouble__Miss_Dimple_Kilpatrick__4_" title="Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble (Miss Dimple Kilpatrick #4) by Mignon F. Ballard" rel="noopener">Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble</a> and am now trying to play catch up. I liked this one even better than that one! This series is set during World War 2 in a small North Georgia town where everyone knows everyone else and Miss Dimple has taught first grade for years.<br /><br />I especially like the interactions among the women in this town. They remind me a lot of the women in the small town my grandparents lived in who were always so supportive and nosy and had a special caring for neighbors. It is like a more serious version of the fictional southern town of Mayberry from the Andy Griffith Show. There is so much that I recognize as authentic to this type of place and this type of people (I grew up in Atlanta which is in North Georgia with the small town my grandparents lived in being 40 miles north of there) and the food is the kind of things they cooked. It rings true. <br /><br />There is also an authentic sense of life in World War 2 era small town America with rationing, shortages, people sharing from victory gardens, not being about to buy new bikes for the kids or stockings for the ladies, and gas being hard to get. It is a warm book. Families in the story worry about sons, husbands, brothers, and sweethearts off to the war. They cringe when the young man who drives a black bicycle and brings bad-news telegrams shows up on their street. Young women feel confused over love and meet young soldiers on leave or on their way from training to be sent off to a dangerous future who they develop hasty feelings for. <br /><br />First grade teacher Miss Dimple is kidnapped during all of this and is held by people who want information and help from her brother Henry who is working at the Bell Bomber plant in Marietta (I had relatives work there during World War 2!) on a secret plane capable of carrying nuclear weapons. No one in town knows this and thinks Henry acts strange when he does not seem interested. As ladies in town seek to find out what happened to her, Miss Dimple is frustrated when her efforts to get help fail and the one person who could help- a young boy known for his flights of fancy- is not believed because he likes to make up mystery stories, spy stories, and tall tales. <br /><br />I guess you could call this a cozy mystery series. It feels more like a slice of history that has a mystery involved more than anything else. I don't really read cozies but this doesn't fit the formula and feels quite different. I really enjoyed it.

Big changes have come to the small Georgia town where Miss Dimple has taught first grade for 40 years. Since World War II broke out, the men have been leaving, many former students and some never to return. For third-grade teacher Charlie Carr, that means a decided lack of men. For now her beau Hugh is still around but she knows it's only a matter of time before her overcomes his mother's objections and marches off to war. She isn't sure how she feels about that or making a commitment to him. She tries to focus on her job and not think about Hugh, her brother, her best friend's brother and she tries not to resent her younger sister for marrying and moving away preventing Charlie from leaving their widowed mother and joining the WAACS or WAVES. Early one morning Charlie arrives at school to discover the furnace hasn't been lit and the trash cans have not been emptied. The staff is shocked to discover the janitor, "Christmas" Wilson dead in the storage closet. He had strange wounds on his head and part of the school's wooden eagle mascot has broken off but the police are mysteriously tight lipped about the cause of death. Then Miss Dimple fails to show up for work. Faithful in her duties for 40 years no one expected her to miss a day let alone leave town without telling anyone, but where could she be? Charlie and her best friend Annie are determined to keep pestering the police for answers while Charlie's mom and Aunt Lou take it upon themselves to investigate.<br /><br />This story resembles a classic mystery novel with a bit of romance thrown in. The major focus of the story is Miss Dimple's disappearance. The writing style is a little odd. Each chapter begins with the thoughts of one specific character before switching over to omniscient point-of-view. Even so, we don't know the identity of the villain/s or where Miss Dimple is until the final clues fall into place. I didn't find the plot all that engaging but I had a hard time putting the book down until I found out who the villain was. Some of the period references are really forced into the story, especially the pop culture references. Other period details are seamlessly woven into the story which I really liked. There may have been mistakes in the rationing timeline but no one except for those who studied rationing intensely will probably notice or care. Charlie's romantic dilemma didn't really interest me much. The romance is clean with a kiss or two. Charlie does wonder what it would be like to make love with Hugh but they don't make it past the friendship mark.<br /><br />There were too many characters to keep track of in this novel. The main characters are Miss Dimple, Charlie and her best friend Annie. Charlie is a bit hard to know. She's rather reserved for the most part. She loves her family, seems to like her job well enough and had big dreams about life beyond small town Georgia. Her best friend Annie is lively, fun and quotes Shakespeare. I loved her instantly. She's the kind of person I'd like to be friends with even if she's a bit nosy. Miss Dimple is the type of woman she likes to read about in mystery novels. She's intelligent, brave, and non-nonsense. She never panics and is always resourceful. I liked her well enough but found her a bit prim. Charlie's mom, Jo and Aunt Lou provide some comic relief. Aunt Lou is so funny. She's spunky, sassy and full of get up and go. She's an older version of Annie. I liked her very much. <br /><br />I didn't care enough about the characters or the town to want to read more of this series right away but next time I need something to read I may look for the next book in the series in the library.

I really enjoyed this. It was a bit slow in parts but I powered through and really liked how the author tied up all the strings at the end. It was interesting to get a peek into WW II Georgia, USA. I've read several other books that take place around this time but take place in England or elsewhere. The author seemed very faithful to the historical background. The variety of town characters were really what kept me reading the book. They were very well drawn and I was kept guessing as to who the bad guy(s) could be.

I loved this book. Very simple and classic but entertaining. Loved the characters and you find yourself getting wrapped up in their lives. There is a mystery but at times it seems to be put on the back burner, so to speak but the author puts it back in just at the right time. When I finished I felt like I had read a Nancy Drew book. Loved the simplicity of this book. Kept my interest the whole time.

It's Autumn 1942 in the small town of Elderberry, Georgia. The world is at war and the residents are shaken to their shoes. Many of the men have enlisted while others wait to be called up. Women are working in the munitions plant and even children collect metal. <br />The school's custodian is found dead in a broom closet, and then Miss Dimple Kilpatrick, the town's first grade teacher for over 40 years, goes missing. Townspeople investigate as best they can given their responsibilities and the upcoming holidays. Will these mysteries ever be solved?<br />Entertaining, interesting characters, a look at small town USA during the war.

I loved the Augusta Goodnight series, this is new.<br /><br />Miss Dimple Disappears<br />Mignon Ballard<br />c. Dec 2010<br />Minotaur<br />ISBN 9780312614744<br />Hardcover $23.95<br /><br />Mignon Ballard, author the delightful Augusta Goodnight series, sets off on a different tack with her new mystery series set in Georgia during WWII.<br /><br />Told in 1940 charm, spies are everywhere and Elderberry’s grade school boys are on the case – or at least one in particular. Willie Elrod is convinced he saw his former first grade teacher, Miss Dimple Kilpatrick, kidnapped. Why won’t anyone believe him? Not even his pretty fourth grade teacher Miss Charlie Carr?<br /><br />Charlie’s got enough trouble on her hands trying to explain the school janitor’s untimely death the day Miss Dimple, who taught school for forty years and never missed a day, disappears. Are the two events related? And why aren’t the police doing more to find the missing teacher? Charlie and her third grade teacher friend, Annie, decide to do all they can to help find Dimple. Underneath the intrigue of the missing teacher, Charlie and her widowed mother, Jo, are actively involved in the war effort, with Jo Carr helping on the homefront at the munitions plant. The women put on social events, send packages and visit bereaved families to try to make life a little easier for soldiers away and home on leave. At the town’s Thanksgiving dinner, Annie meets the soldier of her dreams. But what about Annie’s special friend, Will? When Charlie later meets Will, a pilot in training, Charlie feels guilty for having romantic feelings for him, especially since Charlie’s long-time friend has just left for the army and asked her to write to him. Charlie and Annie never dismiss Miss Dimple’s plight, however, and eventually become convinced that Dimple’s engineer brother is the key to her situation.<br /><br />Miss Dimple is not a helpless captive. Her attempts to plant clues for her would-be rescuers are quaint, brilliant and tender. Her love of community is well-defined by her attempts to draw the attention of the people she knows so well.<br /><br />Mignon Ballard has created a wonderful little slice of Americana during a terrible era. Never mincing sentiment, she showcases all the sorrows and joys of the time with true-to-era lifestyle and lingo. A sweet read.<br />

I chose to read this book because of the title. I loved the name Miss Dimple! It was a little slow at first, but then I really got into it and enjoyed it tremendously. The characters were engaging and the plot had some twists and turns. It takes place in a small town in Georgia during WWII in the year 1942. One of the main characters, Charlie Carr, is a teacher like Miss Dimple, and has a brother in the war, possibly in North Africa. She has a beau that leaves for Navy medic training. She’s not sure if she loves him or not. And then Miss Dimple disappears and no one can figure out what happened to her! Miss Dimple turns out to be one formidable woman! I like reading fiction set in WWII. It has always interested me, probably because my Dad and 3 Uncles and numerous cousins were in the war. I wasn’t even born yet. I enjoyed all the expressions relevant to that era and learning about the rationing. It was a fun read.

A pleasant story about small town Georgia during WWII. Sixty some year old Miss Dimple, Elderberry Elementary's long time first grade teacher disappears. What follows is no one person looking for her. The main character of the series, if it is to be a series, is another first year teacher at the school who had Miss Dimple herself in first grade. She wonders about Miss Dimple's disappearance but doesn't do anything about it until the end of the book. Mostly she thinks about her boyfriend and her brother off to war and a possible new romance. More a story of small town America than a mystery. The why of the mystery, which has to do with espionage is never fully explained, not to the characters and not even to the reader.