Tue 1 Feb 2011
Archived Review: CHARLOTTE MacLEOD – Rest You Merry.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[4] Comments
CHARLOTTE MacLEOD – Rest You Merry. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1978. Avon, paperback, 1979; reprinted many times.
Every Christmas the New England agricultural college where Peter Shandy is a professor attracts people from far and wide to view the mammoth Grand Illumination covering the campus. All but Shandy’s house, up until this year, and then his uproariously flamboyant form of rebellion has an unexpectedly murderous backlash.
No book with an undertaker named Goulson and a ubiquitous blond student named Heidi Hayhoe can be entirely serious, and it should be noted that the key to the first murder is a missing marble (no kidding).
Nevertheless, even seasoned mystery readers will fall all over themselves in trying to put together the pieces of this puzzle before Shandy and his disarmingly amateurish sleuthing. Uncommonly enjoyable.
The Professor Peter Shandy series —
Rest You Merry (1978)
The Luck Runs Out (1979)
Wrack and Rune (1981)
Something the Cat Dragged in (1983)
The Curse of the Giant Hogweed (1985)
The Corpse in Oozak’s Pond (1986)
Vane Pursuit (1989)
An Owl Too Many (1991)
Something in the Water (1994)
Exit the Milkman (1996)
[UPDATE] 02-01-11. Charlotte MacLeod’s last mystery novel was published in 1998, and she died in 2005 in her early 80s. Her books were very popular while she was alive, but she’s nearly forgotten today. (If I’m wrong about this, please correct me.)
I think that books in both of her series, this and the Kellling-Bittersohn mysteries, were wacky and eccentric enough to be called “screwball mysteries,” although she was never fortunate enough to have any of them picked up and adapted into the films.
I enjoyed this one, as you’ve already read, but wackiness is difficult to maintain over a long period of time, and later books did not seem to have the same pizazz as this one did. Or maybe it was only me.
February 1st, 2011 at 4:36 pm
She lost me with the Welsh fantasy one (THE GIANT HOGWEED, I believe), but otherwise I enjoyed most of the ones I read, though not too many in a short period of time.
She also wrote wacky “screwball” mysteries under the name Alisa Craig, including a series featuring a Canadian Mountie and his family and one with the Lobelia Falls Grub-and-Stakers Gardening & Roving Club.
Needless to say, these are books more suited to Ellen Nehr (who was a close friend of hers) than to some of the rest of us.
In person she was a charming and delightful woman. Sadly she died of Alzheimers.
February 1st, 2011 at 5:04 pm
I was reading some mystery the other day and it had a character who was talking about how her garden was getting trampled. She kept going on about the Ailsa Craig being ruined. And I learned that the Ailsa Craig in question is a specific kind of onion! Alisa is, of course, an anagram for Ailsa. Oh, that Charlotte MacLeod was a witty woman and a jokester. But like Jeff her books were not my speed.
February 1st, 2011 at 6:06 pm
Jeff
I should have remembered to mention the books MacLeod wrote at Alisa Craig. There were quite a few in each series, though I don’t think they were as popular as those under her own name.
And you’re right about THE GIANT HOGWEED. Here’s what one reviewer on Amazon said about it:
“As absurd as Charlotte MacLeod occasionally gets, this is by far the silliest book that she’s ever written. Time travel, cursed swords, the invention of soap, and ancient goddesses figure into the plot of what could be called MacLeod’s only foray into a fantastic realm.
“Professor Shandy and the gang are in England for a conference on what to do about the Giant Hogweed that is overtaking agriculture everywhere. Little do they know that only they can find the key to the survival of agriculture everywhere sometime in the distant past.”
As close as Ellen Nehr was to Charlotte MacLeod, she didn’t like this book and confided in me once that she was running out of ways not to tell her.
John
That’s funny! I hadn’t known about Ailsa Craig onions, but there is is an uninhabited island in the outer Firth of Clyde, Scotland, with the very same name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ailsa_Craig
And from another website, here’s the connection:
“History Notes for Ailsa Craig Onions:
Developed in 1887 by a gardener for the Marquis of Ailsa at Culzean Castle in Maybole, South Ayrshire, Scotland. From Culzean Castle, as indeed from the Ayrshire coast, you can see the island of Ailsa Craig (from the Gaelic “ailsse creag”, which means “fairy rock”). Either the Marquis or his gardener named the onion after this island. Some sources say the name was chosen because the island looks like an onion (more like the bottom of an onion actually), but this is just conjecture with no solid backing for it. Besides, some people think the island looks more like a crusty roll.”
Either way, or maybe both, this has to be where she got the name from. “Fairy rock.” I like it.
— Steve
February 1st, 2011 at 6:35 pm
This was the only one of her books I read. I enjoyed it, but just didn’t get into it or the Alisa Craig series. Still, you have to admire the sense of humor of someone who takes their pseudonym from an onion.
As I said, I appreciated this one, but from what I saw of the other books I didn’t really feel she was going to be able to sustain the mood. I think the only other book I have by her was a little volume from Mysterious Press — not much more than a novella also on the Christmas theme.