Sun 19 May 2019
Archived Review: CHARLOTTE MacLEOD – The Recycled Citizen.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[2] Comments
CHARLOTTE MacLEOD – The Recycled Citizen. Sarah Kelling (Bittersohn) #7. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1988; paperback, 1989.
The senior citizens’ recycling center run by Sarah Kelling’s many relatives runs into hard times in this latest adventure. One of the members is a mugging victim, but leaves traces of heroin in his scavenger bag, and unaccountably, a fortune of $41,326.
In recent books MacLeod has erred badly in assuming that we are all as fond of her characters as she is. Of the 250 pages in this one, 200 are filled with tweedle. Humorous, good-natured tweedle, but still tweedle. The other 50 pages consist of utter nonsense.
[FOOTNOTE.] Would you believe a drug delivery system based on filling empty antique cans of Grapercola soda pop with dope, then dropping them conveniently on the paths of senior citizens supplementing their incomes from retrieving them for salvage? Neither would I. (Yes, I know it’s meant to be funny. Believe me, I wish it were.)
May 19th, 2019 at 6:09 pm
Ha! I see I fell into the same trap that I complained about. It was deliberately a short review, but I never managed to say anything about the characters in the story myself.
It’s been a while since I read any of the books in this series — this was probably the last — so I had to go hunting on the Internet to come up with the following:
Sarah Kelling is a boarding house owner/socalite while her husband-to-be, Max Bittersohn, is an art security expert/detective, with the stories set in Boston.
The books were popular. Twelve of their recorded adventures together were published between 1979 and 1998.
May 19th, 2019 at 11:52 pm
Tweedle, is a perfect description of why I stopped reading her. Not bad tweedle as tweedle goes, but far exceeding my tolerance for tweedle.