1977, #1 Professor Peter Shandy, Balaclava Agricultural College, New England; murder of an obnoxious woman at Christmastime involves a quiet academic in sleuthing and affection; her first adult novel, it's filled with all the right stuff for a lovely cosy village-type comedy/mystery, plus a bit m...
The Convivial Codfish, 1984, by Charlotte MacLeod. 5th in the Sarah Kelling/Max Bittersohn series.Max plays the stronger role here, with his wife Sarah more in the background. Sarah’s relative Jem Kelling has just become Exalted Chowderhead of the Comrades of Convivial Codfish, and is honoured to...
As a regular mystery reader, it seems rare when yours truly falls for every “red herring” in the book. The Resurrection Man is one of those books that took me on exactly that wild ride. Generally, when I read Charlotte MacLeod’s work, I have a vague sense of where it is going. In this case, I loc...
1979, #1 Sarah Kelling/Max Bittersohn, Beacon Hill, Boston; genteel cosy, still wonderful despite age. High jinks (and murder) in High Society, but with a very dark edgeMrs. Sarah Kelling has lived a very privileged life in the highest social circles of Boston, living on Beacon Hill and having a ...
I was disappointed with “The Corpse In Oozak’s Pond” after finishing “The Palace Guard”; which was phenomenal. The previous Peter novel too, raised the roof on the unexpected; a medieval fantasy! This time, I did like acquainting a far region of university terrain. Discovering a corpse in th...
“The Palace Guard” entertains us, in Canadian Charlotte MacLeod’s much loved series about a young Boston widow and her relatives. It’s rewarding that we know them well. They make us laugh and are identifiable, thus we are mentally involved with the story. Personal thoughts and sidebar observat...
I just reread this for the umpteenth time (I'm rereading the series). A charming-silly-slightly brooding romp--which is what one expects of MacLeod, and is certainly true of all the Grub-and-Stakers books. But I was struck this time around, because I have been doing a lot of thinking about the ...
Sarah and Max deal with Sarah's Yacht club friends or rather Alexander's friends who wish to protect her from that Jewish fellow Bittersohn. Instead they decide who would be most suitable for Sarah to marry from among their number to keep her in her proper social milieu. Meanwhile Max's family ar...
Murder Goes Mumming, 1981, by Charlotte MacLeod (aka Alisa Craig). 2nd in the Janet Wadman/Madoc Rhys series.Janet and Madoc met in A Pint of Murder, and promptly fell in love. In this book, their love affair continues, with Janet finding out all sorts of unexpected facts about the man she though...
Vane Pursuit by Charlotte MacLeod is one of my loosely contrued academic mysteries. MacLeod has two sets of series characters: Professor Peter Shandy & his lovely librarian wife Helen and Sarah Kelling & Max Bittersohn. Both series are very literate and very funny and feature an eccentric cast of...
After listening to an old favorite THE FAMILY VAULT, #1 in this series, and loving it, I was aware that #3 is also available in audio. I had to reread #2 THE WITHDRAWING ROOM to get to it. Am I glad I did!Sarah Kelling, new widow, turns her old family mansion into a boarding house. The boarders a...
I'm fairly certain that I picked this book up at a garage sale. Or a thrift store? I had it on my TBR shelves for about 2 years before I finally picked it up. And it's taken me a LONG time to get through it. Not that it was bad, it just kept putting me to sleep. It's the first in the series for m...
I was so excited to read a mystery book, but I was sadly disappointed. Right off the bat, I felt like there were too many characters with different names, and it was hard to follow the story. By the time I truly got a grip on who the characters were I had missed so much. When the person who commi...
Charlotte MacLeod had been a well-established cozy author in the '90s, when I got this Advance. It's sad to learn, now, that she only published two more books before falling victim to Alzheimer's and dying in 2005. Given that she published nearly 40 books and lived to the age of 83, though, I pro...