From Kirkus Reviews
Peter Shandy, botany professor at Balaclava Agricultural College and sometime sleuth (Something in the Water, 1994, etc.), lives, with librarian wife Helen, next door to dairy-management Professor Jim Feldster and Mirelle, his harridan of a wife. Taciturn to a fault, but a member of umpteen lodges, Jim disappears one night on the way to a lodge meeting. The Shandys' house guest, mystery writer Catriona McBogle, on her way home to Maine and exercising her penchant for getting lost, finds herself on a little-used, treacherous road and spies a car at the bottom of a ravine. It contains a trussed-up, dehydrated, near-dead Jim Feldster. Catriona had already unearthed Jim's carefully hidden kinship with the famous Feldstermeister clan of Dairies International, whose patriarch has just died, leaving Jim the head honcho. As Jim slowly recovers in the luxurious family manse, a neighbor back in Balaclava Junction has discovered Mirelle's blood- covered body seated in her pristine, white-carpeted living room. Peter's efforts to make some sense of it all aren't helped by village policeman Fred Ottermole, Mirelle's eccentric doctor Howland Melchett, or college president Svenson's hatred of publicity; events, however, quickly overtake all these wonderfully weird characters. Nit-pickers could wish for less of the Shandys' somewhat smug banter; less food and cat chat; fewer over-the-top characters; and a plotline less bizarre. But the story is incident-packed, often wryly funny, and intriguing most of the way. The author's legion of fans will undoubtedly love every minute. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
“Endearing . . . bewitching!” —Chicago Sun-Times “In the 10th Shandy tale, MacLeod again demonstrates her skill and with incomparable whimsy makes her bucolic puzzles great fun.” —Publishers Weekly “One of the most gifted mystery authors writing today.” —Sojourner: The Women’s Forum “The screwball mystery is Charlotte MacLeod’s cup of tea.” —Chicago Tribune “Charlotte MacLeod does what she does better than anybody else does it; and what she does is in the top rank of modern mystery fiction.” —Elizabeth Peters, creator of the Amelia Peabody series “The epitome of the ‘cozy’ mystery.” —Mostly Murder “MacLeod can be counted on for a witty, literate and charming mystery.” —Publishers Weekly “Charm, wit, and Holmesian logic.” —AudioFile
About the Author
Charlotte MacLeod (1922–2005) was an internationally bestselling author of cozy mysteries. Born in Canada, she moved to Boston as a child, and lived in New England most of her life. After graduating from college, she made a career in advertising, writing copy for the Stop & Shop Supermarket Company before moving on to Boston firm N. H. Miller & Co., where she rose to the rank of vice president. In her spare time, MacLeod wrote short stories, and in 1964 published her first novel, a children’s book called Mystery of the White Knight. In Rest You Merry (1978), MacLeod introduced Professor Peter Shandy, a horticulturist and amateur sleuth whose adventures she would chronicle for two decades. The Family Vault (1979) marked the first appearance of her other best-known characters: the husband and wife sleuthing team Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn, whom she followed until her last novel, The Balloon Man, in 1998.
