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Agatha’s Grandchildren
First of all: all the cases of Dodds and McDonald remind me of Agatha Christie novels.
Furthermore: although the series is called “McDonald & Dodds” – in my opinion – the main character is Dodds.
There is a DCI from London, a young woman, career driven, fit concerning all modern investigation methods, using any gadget that’s available. She ends up in Bath to prove that she is capable of … whipping a local police force in shape and getting rid of colleagues who cannot keep up with modern times.
Dodds – a man without a first name – happens to end up in her team. He is over fifty, used to work from his desk, a paper pusher. Nevertheless Dodds is also fit, even if only armed with a classic notepad and a pen. He benefits from years in the police force, his experiences in numerous cases and an extraordinarily distinct general knowledge concerning people, society and life. I’m not quite sure if he enjoys leaving his desk for real life investigations at the beginning.
Dodds is on McDonald’s hit list, but he doesn’t like the idea of retirement. So a conflict is inevitable. However, there is daily business like investigating murder cases.
McDonald seems unable to cope with extraordinary complex cases which she isn’t used to work on compared to her London background. She becomes dependent of Dodd’s help and insights. So how to deal with her task to retire Dodds? McDonald shows her ability of managing … avoiding any drawbacks for herself and her career.
Concerning the cases you may think that Agatha Christie came back to write some new detective stories residing in modern times, portraying a modern society where murder sometimes is an art … or so. Therefore Dodds and McDonald have to team up to solve these bizarre cases. They are a strange team and more than once the actions of each of them will make you smile. Nevertheless it’s always suspense-packed – and together they succeed.
By the way: is there any private life of Dodds or McDonald? So far the private aspects of life are negligible – we only learn that McDonald’s marriage seems … whatever.
In short: it’s a modern comfort crime series at its best.