Rambling About.. Charlotte MacLeod's Vane Pursuit (#boutofbooks book 3)

Author: Charlotte MacLeod

Title: Vane Pursuit

Publication: 1989 - The Mysterious Press

First Lines: "Hey, you! You kid! Get the hell down off that cannon."

************

This is my third book for the BoutofBooks readathon and the seventh book in the Peter Shandy mystery series by Charlotte MacLeod. The first book in the series was the very first book reviewed here and I've loved every one of them. I was actually thinking that this wouldn't be as wonderful as the others as there is very little mention and no sighting of my beloved President Svenson (vacationing with the family in Sweden) ... but I was happily mistaken. 

Charlotte MacLeod's Peter Shandy books are kind of like the tv series Midsomer's Murders. There's always some whacked out mystery involving something you would never think would be interesting and a cast of characters that make you shake your head at how in the world they could be interesting ... and it all makes sense somehow. This time around, the local soap factory is burnt down just hours after Helen has taken photos of the antique weathervane for a historical society project and the weathervane disappears (as has been the case after a few other local fires). While Peter's wife, Helen, and Iduna Stott head up to stay with a friend in Maine and do some more weathervane research, Peter stays behind to help local journalist Cronkite Swope clear his brother's name in the arson of the factory.

Sure. Soap factory arson and weathervane theft. Call me riveted.

No, really! I was!

And, in the end, it all made sense.

 I loved getting to see more of Cronkite and Iduna and fell in even more in love with Peter and Helen. (And, seriously, if I ever get thrown off of a boat I hope I have someone like Iduna with me!) I really think that one of the reasons this series is one of my favorites is that in spite of the "yeah, right ... like that would make a decent book" feel some of the storylines might initially have, the way MacLeod told them makes them feel so much more real than a lot of cozy mysteries. These people feel like family and all of their strange little stories and acquaintances along the way totally remind me of listening to my grandparents, their siblings, and various second/third/whatever cousins over the years. 

I'm crushed that I only have three more books left in the series, but absolutely know that it'll be a series I'll re-read. 

#24in48 Winter 2017 Readathon Recap

It's not 12:30am and the 24in48 Readathon is finished. I fell half an hour short of the 24 hours, but had a blast, won a prize, and read four great books in the process (well, two great, one pretty good and one okay).

Book 1: The Corpse in Oozak's Pond by Charlotte MacLeod -- Not my favorite in the Peter Shandy series (likely because there wasn't enough Svenson for me), but not a bad read. This installment revolves heavily around the Buggins family, murder, and a lawsuit over the pond that the college uses for their utilities. Shandy is his same ol' snarky brilliant self and Chief Ottermole is along for a great deal of the investigation. Of course, he is the police chief so that makes sense ... but he's just not nearly as much fun as some of the other sidekicks have been. Lots of twists and turns and old family secrets kept things interesting, but I still missed my viking President.
*also fits in with my Cloak & Dagger Challenge

Book 2: The Vintage Cinema Club by Jane Linfoot -- This was a light UK-based chick lit which I almost always love, but not at all what I was expecting. I guess it's my own fault for picking it up because of the adorable cover and Linfoot being an author that I've previously enjoyed. I enjoyed this, as well, but not as much as I had hoped. Silly me, I was expecting the Vintage Cinema Club to be based around old movies in some way! I also hoped to have the three "main" characters (Izzy, Luce and Dida) to have actually all been main characters rather than one main character and two afterthoughts. I kept reading through hoping for more on the other two and got very little.
*The "V" for Alphabet Soup

Book 3: If Fried Chicken Could Fly by Paige Shelton -- I originally grabbed this because I needed an "I" for the Alphabet Soup challenge and thought "Hmmm ... a cozy about a cooking school? Sounds okay. Sure!" It's so much better than okay, though -- there are GHOSTS!!! Of course, in my mind this instantly takes it from "okay" to "fantabulous." The only thing better would have been if they had been pirate ghosts instead of cowboys, but this is set in Missouri so pirates wouldn't be too prevalent. (There is, however, a funny bit about dubloons between the main character and her best friend so that sort of makes up for it!) Absolutely loved this book and I look forward to visiting Broken Rope again soon. (I've already checked and my library has the whole series!)
*The "I" for Alphabet Soup and fits the Cloak & Dagger Challenge

Book 4: Sorcery & Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia C Wrede and Caroline Stevermer -- I had wanted to read this when I was in middle school and it was first released but my father heard someone say something about it that made it forbidden. I had completely forgotten about it until OpenRoad was doing a giveaway on Twitter and it was one of the options. Nothing (and no one) to hold me back now! Such an interesting read! Heavily inspired by Jane Austen (therefore fitting into my Year of Jane) and magic, each chapter is a letter written from one cousin (Cecelia) to the other (Kate), with the authors each taking one of the cousins to write as. There's magic, mystery, humor, romance ... and I highly recommend it.
*The "W" for my A to Z Authors, also fits The Year of Jane in a roundabout "inspired" way

Charlotte MacLeod's The Corpse in Oozak's Pond (Book Beginnings & Friday 56)

I just completed Susan Elia MacNeal's Mr. Churchill's Secretary, which was amazing and teased this past Tuesday ... so now to move on to my next book! I picked it out as the first book for the 24in48 Winter 2017 Readathon, but I'm not sure I'll be able to bring myself to wait until Saturday to start it in earnest. After all, it's a Peter Shandy and I'm head over heels for the odd man. Once I get started on a MacLeod book I typically fly through them. It may be done by the time the Readathon begins!

Amazon Description

 The rural town of Balaclava greets Groundhog Day as an excuse for one last cold-weather fling. The students and faculty of the local agricultural college drink cocoa, throw snowballs, and, when the temperature allows, ice skate. Oozak’s Pond is not quite frozen this year, though, and as the Groundhog Day celebrations reach their peak, the students see someone bobbing through the ice. The drowning victim is long past help, though; he’s badly decomposed and dressed in an old-fashioned frock coat with a heavy rock in each pocket.

 

First on the scene is Peter Shandy, horticulturalist and, when the college requires it, detective. But solving this nineteenth-century murder will take more than Shandy’s knack for rutabagas. Relying on his wife’s expertise in local history, the professor dives into a gilded-age mystery that cloaks secrets that remain potent enough to kill.

Friday 56 (share from the 56th page or 56% mark) is hosted at Freda's Voice 

& Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences) is at Rose City Reader.

Book Beginnings, Friday 56 & A Ramble - Charlotte MacLeod's The Curse of the Giant Hogweed

As always, Friday 56 (share a blurb from the 56th page or 56% mark) is hosted at Freda's Voice & Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences) is at Rose City Reader. 

Keep reading after the image for a brief ramble and my "faves of 4s." I know, I already teased this once on Tuesday and then today with two more snippets from the beginning and the 56% mark .... but MacLeod's books are just so dang teasable! 

The Curse of the Giant Hogweed is the fifth book in Charlotte MacLeod's Peter Shandy series and totally unlike anything I have read from MacLeod before -- and I loved it!
Peter is in England with his friends and colleagues, Dan Stott and Tim Ames. They're attending a conference to work on combatting the problem of the giant hogweed which had been overthrowing the countryside and endangering other plants -- and people. While searching for a good drink and a specimen of hogweed the three stop off at an old pub on the Welsh side of the border and ....
Well, now this is where things get a little iffy. Did Peter fall asleep and dream the rest? Did the three actually somehow cross into some portal that landed them in a fairytale-ish medieval Wales? Does the answer really matter? (My answer = nope. Not at all.)
So there are hags and princes and princesses and griffins and magic and hordes of treasure and murder and mayhem and oh-so-much humor. MacLeod is always good for a belly chuckle. At first I thought that I would be miserable with the absence of my beloved viking hunk, President Thorkjeld Svenson. Alas! In the alternate reality that takes up the vast majority of the tale we get young strapping Sir Torchyld who just happens to be the nephew of King Sfyn and madly in love with the beautiful Syglinde (President Svenson's wife in the "real" world is Sieglinde). You really need to read the previous books to really understand what makes this one so delightful as far as character similarities (and differences) go.

Faves on 4s:
4%: Great balls of fire, where was Peter Shandy? Gradually, without his knowing when or how, Peter's feet had moved from ancient oak planking to forest floor.
14%: "...Matilda's penchant was for British authors who wrote about children falling down rabbit holes or stepping into wardrobes and finding themselves henceforth involved with adventures of a nature which at the time seemed to be fantastical. I therefore assumed these to be works of fiction. Now I realize they must have been mere vignettes of local history."
34%: He couldn't help believing in enchantments because he knew they happened. Therefore, he might well be conditioned to believe in enchantments that hadn't really happened at all. The young fellow simply hadn't yet learned to separate the abra from the cadabra.
54%: Torchyld flung his arms around the griffin's neck and wept until the beast began to utter plaintive sqwawks at getting its head soaked.
84%: Daniel Stott, who could make even a page of hog statistics sound impressive, recited several of the more affecting verses from sympathy cards received at the time of his first wife Elizabeth's demise.... The eulogy was well constructed, eloquently delivered, and probably not more inanely inappropriate than most.

Teaser Tuesday - Charlotte MacLeod's Curse of the Giant Hogweed

Amazon Description

Professor Shandy, propagator of the world's most renowned rutabaga and Balaclava College's best amateur sleuth, takes on the case of the Giant Hogweed - a garden pest about to wipe out Britain's lovely hedgerows. With colleagues Dan Stott and Timothy Ames at his side, he leaves the groves of academe for some fancy fieldwork deep in the heart of Wales. But never in their wildest dreams did the three professors expect the bizarre events that awaited them.... Where Miss Hilda Horsefall's recipe for homemade lye soap becomes as valuable as Dan Stott's knowledge of The Chronicles of Narnia...and where pursuing the wild asparagus...or rather the Giant Hogweed...becomes a dangerous expedition indeed.

Rambling About.. Something The Cat Dragged In by Charlotte MacLeod

Title: Something The Cat Dragged In Author: Charlotte MacLeod Publication: 1 September 1983 - Doubleday // August 1984 - Avon (paperback) // 6 November 2012 - MysteriousPress (digital) Amazon Description: An unpleasant man in every respect, university professor Herbert Ungley is exceedingly vain. One morning, his landlady catches her cat coming in with Ungley’s hairpiece between its teeth. It’s clear something has happened to the old grouch, because he would never be caught without his toupee. Ungley is found in the yard behind his social club, with his head bashed in and his baldness plain for the world to see. Although the police are content to call it an accident, sleuthing horticulturalist Peter Shandy is unconvinced, and finds there are too many unanswered questions. How did Ungley come to have such a bulging bank account? Who was Ungley’s long-lost heir, and what did he have to do with the professor’s lost hair? And whose is the second body in the woods? Shandy must answer these questions and more if he’s to find who pulled the rug out from the balding corpse.

First Lines: "Edmund! You know better than that. Dragging in some poor, dead creature just as I've finished mopping the floor."
Faves on 4s: 
14% - Anybody who'd take the trouble to stack forty-eight paper clips in neat rows of six apiece within their little box would not be apt to leave the sofa pillows askew.
44% - "The organ may be gone, but the music remains. That's what my great-aunt Mabel used to say after they took out her whatevers."
74% - "You deserve a slap on the back, Ottermole. Keep it up. Try the pumpkin pie."
84% - The chief regarded the warrant fondly. He must have been yearning for years to wave one of these under some miscreant's nose.

Ramble: Before this blog officially started I wasted the time (and, likely, tested the patience) of the handful of readers I had at my diet/health blog at the time. I never seemed to have anything worthwhile to say there that was on-topic so I would fill the space with whatever I was doing when I wasn't exercising and watching what I ate -- so, pretty much, reading. I started this in December 2014 and the first book I rambled about was the first book in Charlotte MacLeod's Peter Shandy series -- Rest You Merry. Something The Cat Dragged In is the fourth book in the series and I have six more to go. I'm stretching them out as much as I can since there won't ever be any more but it's hard because I'm still so madly in love with Peter Shandy -- and, as the series progresses, with his boss.
I mostly read my paperback version but pulled the "Faves on 4s" from my digital copy since it seemed like every page that ended in 4 in the actual book was riddled with spoilers. To quote Thorkjeld Svenson: URRGH!
Actually, all of my favorites could easily have been Svenson-centric this time around even though he only made a smattering of appearances. He's quite the quotable fellow.

25%

51%

89%

90%

See? Isn't he just .... everything?

All in all, I loved this book just as I've loved everything else of MacLeod's that I've read so far. Not only is Peter Shandy still adorable and Thorkjeld Svenson is still a burning hunk of Viking hotness, but we also get to know some of the secondary characters from previous books a bit better and are introduced to some new characters that I certainly hope to see again. Likely not to happen in the next installment since it's supposed to take place off campus, but the sixth one, hopefully....

And now I suppose I should read one of the ARCs I've recently acquired. Or start another MacLeod series (I have two started and two not). Urrgh.

Teaser Tuesday - Charlotte MacLeod's Something The Cat Dragged In

The Book & Tease

The Meme

Murder Goes Mumming by Charlotte MacLeod (writing as Alisa Craig)

In early October I was a little rough on the first book in the Rhys series, A Pint of Murder, since I was slammed with a spoiler before I even started to read it ... but now I look back at it with delight. In this second installment, Murder Goes Mumming, we get to learn ooooh so much more about our dear hero, Madoc Rhys of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. We learned a lot about his sweetheart Janet in the first book so it was nice for him to finally get more of a backstory, too. (And the fact that there's a good reason for the delay? Yeah ... MacLeod was a freaking master.)

Madoc has some time off for Christmas and is thrilled to be able to spend it with Janet. His mother wrangles the two of them an invitation to a holiday house-party at Graylings, home of the Condrycke family. The family is a bit, well, nuts. There's cantankerous old Granny who refuses to be seen because her dentures have gone missing. There's Aunt Addie who speaks without thinking which gets interesting since she also appears to be a bit psychic. There's the head of the house, Squire, and his various children and their spouses and their children and Janet's ex-boyfriend (awwwwwkward). There's the household staff, as well, but we really don't get to see much of any of them aside from Ludovic, the butler.

Of course there's a giant snow storm coming in that's so bad that Madoc and Janet get helicoptered in thanks to the RCMP ... and no one can get out for at least a few days since the estate is in the middle of nowhere (aren't they all?). No worries, though, since the family has a schedule full of activities planned and keep things interesting with jokes and pranks and a lot of food and alcohol ... and murder. 

I seriously love Charlotte MacLeod. Madoc and Janet are absolutely darling. She uses phrases like "dollar to doughnuts." The supporting cast is a hoot and I hope that at least some of them are seen again. The solution to the mystery at hand wasn't completely obvious nor was it completely shocking when revealed. She writes bits like this:

Fa la la, indeed!

#BookBeginnings & #Friday56 -- Murder Goes Mumming

Ahhh, Charlotte MacLeod (under the pen name Alisa Craig). How happy I am to have another Christmas-y book! The first MacLeod book I read was Rest You Merry and I instantly became a fan. Now I have two series of hers going and another two lined up in thee ol' TBR. 

As always, Friday56 (share a blurb from the 56th page or 56% mark) is hosted at Freda's Voice & Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences) is at Rose City Reader.

Charlotte MacLeod's A Pint of Murder

A Pint of Murder is the first in the Madoc and Janet Rhys Series written by Charlotte MacLeod under the pen name Alisa Craig (a name she also used for the Grub-And-Stakers series ... which I'll get to some day!). I already fell in love with MacLeod's Peter Shandy so I figured I would give another series a shot (especially since the second one takes place at Christmastime and will fit in nicely with my holiday read-a-thon).

While I can't say that this enthralled me as much as the Peter Shandy series has so far, it was a quick and enjoyable read with some laugh out loud bits right from the start (which you can see on my latest BookBeginnings/Friday 56 post HERE).

I have to admit I was awfully surprised that Madoc didn't appear at all until the tenth chapter! The first nine were all setting up the first murders and the background of Janet Wadman and her neighbors in Pitcherville, New Brunswick (which is in Canada for those of you who may be geographically challenged). Of course, the title is clearly "A Madoc and Janet Rhys Mystery" per the cover of the ebook so even before starting I knew that the two were going to end up together sooner or later.

I hate spoilers.

Maybe THAT was one of the reasons it didn't grip me as much. I kept reading and thinking "Well, get ON with it already!" knowing what was coming for the two ... sooner or later ...

Maybe the second one will hook me a bit more. We'll find out before the end of the year!

Book 3 of the #20BooksOfSummer - Wrack and Rune

Wrack and Rune is the third of Charlotte MacLeod's Peter Shandy Mysteries. Of course, I suggest you read them in order. I rambled about the first one HERE and the second HERE.

It's been quite lovely spending time with Peter and the gang again. Unlike the first two installments, this one doesn't have its main setting as the college campus where Peter and his wife work but, instead, largely at a neighboring farm. We do get to see some of his colleagues but I missed the greater Balaclava Agricultural College community. Luckily there's some bits and pieces of quality time with my beloved President Thorkjeld Svenson ... who is as amazingly Vikingesque as ever. Perhaps even more so since there's a potentially cursed ancient Nordic runestone wreaking (or wracking) havoc.

(And no, "Cronkite" isn't Walter ... 

it's a local journalist who's also wreaking his 

own special kind of enthusiastic havoc.)

So aside from the setting being a bit different, Wrack and Rune has everything I've grown to love about the Peter Shandy series: wit, nerd humor, puns, a mystery I didn't solve myself, the characters I love (though I still can't decide if I have a bigger crush on Svenson or on Shandy. It's a good thing they're fictional and I'd never actually HAVE to choose between them!). 

I'm already looking forward to the next installment, Something the Cat Dragged In ... even though it won't be until September. Or 17 books from now. Whatever.

(By the way, I'm finding it incredibly hard to ramble about a book that's part way into a series. I feel like a dolt saying over and over again : "Go read the first ____ books and then when you've caught up come back!")

Charlotte MacLeod's The Luck Runs Out (and a bonus mini-review of Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda)

My Dear Reader,

If you have yet to read the first of Charlotte MacLeod's Peter Shandy series, Rest You Merry, go do so. While I have no doubt that this would still be enjoyable without that, it will be so much more so if you already know the folks you're about to spend time with.

If Charlotte MacLeod was still alive I would be taking to her social media praising and cursing her all in the same breath. She wrote books that make me miss sleep because I can't stop reading! When I went to take my pre-work nap tonight I looked and saw that I was about 69% through. By the time I allowed my eyes to close I was finished.

Once again, the tale takes place at Balaclava Agricultural College. Peter Shandy and his new wife, Helen, are enjoying life as newlyweds and Helen is enjoying getting to know her new community better by hosting regular dinner parties. Professor Ames is back from Rest You Merry and has a new housekeeper that no one enjoys the company of. She's even bossier and uppity than his late wife, Jemima! After one particularly dreadful dinner party Helen announces that she's invited her landlady from South Dakota to stay for an open-ended visit -- with her and Peter both thinking that she would be just what Professor Ames needs.

SO there's romance.
There's murder.
There's thievery.
There's pignapping.
There's the biggest agricultural competition coming up that has everyone already in a tizzy.
There's superstition.

There's Peter and his counting.

And his snark.

There's Helen and her knowledge of old books.

And her adorableness.

There's Thorkjeld Svenson.

And his Viking-esque Presidential awesomeness.

This time we even get to know his family better. I love his wife as much as I love him. Her youngest daughters were contemplating how she can stand him with his Viking madness at one point as he was about to go and rally the troops. In reply, he made some dramatic Valantino-esque moves on his wife with a quote ... and stated that he couldn't recall the rest of it.

Now I want a herring to put in my window for my Viking .... just in case.

Part of me wants so badly to just marathon the series like I would if it was Netflix. I can't bring myself to, though, because once they're done that's it. No more Shandy. I'm already having separation anxiety over the idea.

In the meantime, though, here's my next read (sneaking it in even though it's not on The Thing):

The Amazon Link:

(right now it's FREE for Kindle!)

And the GoodReads blurb:

It's a freaking Choose Your Own Adventure chick lit!!!!

AND only a few hours later my first chosen "adventure" is done!

I LOVED the Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was growing up so when I saw a grown-up chick-lit-ish offering? I jumped at it. (Didn't hurt that it was free on Amazon at the time.)

Okay, so I chose my path and read it through and didn't end up entirely surprised because I chose the path that I would have chosen back in my single days and it ended pretty much exactly how it ended. And now I want to wallow in a pint (or four) of ice cream. 

Exactly how I used to.

All that being said, I freaking love this book.

I'm half tempted to go back in immediately and try again .... but I'm going to give the book "me" a chance to breathe and I'll revisit it again after a couple of other books.

Well done, Tara Lee Reed.

You owe me a pint of ice cream, though.

Charlotte MacLeod's Rest You Merry

In the wee small hours of Tuesday morning I finally finished Charlotte MacLeod's Rest You Merry! It's the first in the Peter Shandy Mystery series and SO good!

The book was originally released in 1978 and I'm more than a bit dismayed that no one had told me to read her offerings until she popped up as one of my recommendations on GoodReads. I'm going on three decades of being smitten with the genre of the "cozy mystery" so that's a lot of teachers, librarians and bookstore owners who should have known.

I love Peter Shandy.

Like, big puffy heart love.

Like, more than I ever loved Gilbert Blythe love.

He's a 56 year old professor at an agricultural college in Massachussetts. He's intelligent. He's snarky. He's compulsive. He's impulsive. He's also been such a private type that his colleagues and neighbors on campus didn't seem to realize some of these things until one particular Christmas season.

Every year the campus puts on a massive festival called the Grand Illumination and all of the houses on campus (Shandy's included) are expected to participate. For years Shandy has refused, in spite of the constant badgering from the festival's committee members (especially the chair of the committee, who happens to also be his best friend's wife). After all, he refers to the event as the "Annual Fleecing" for all of the money it brought in from visitors. He wants no part of it.

"This was the seventy-third time in eighteen years she’d nagged him about decorating his house. He’d kept count. Shandy had a passion for counting. He would have counted the spots on an attacking leopard, and he was beginning to think a leopard might be a welcome change."

This year, though, he hired decorators to make his house as bright and loud and obnoxious as he could and then he, himself, escaped on a ship out of Boston called the Singapore Susie. Of course, Shandy ends up back on campus before the festival is done and finds a dead woman in his house.

The woman?

Jemima Ames -- his best friend's wife and the head of that blasted committee. She wasn't the most popular woman on campus even though she seemed to be involved every where and with every thing.

“Poor Jemima was such a vibrant personality.”

“That depends on how you define vibrant,” her husband quibbled. “Constantly in motion and not getting anywhere but making a lot of noise about it, like a tuning fork?”

Shandy decides that her death wasn't the accident it looked like and ruffles more than a couple of feathers in trying to get others to pay attention. He's given orders to fix the whole mess by the college president, Thorkjeld Svenson. Svenson is a Viking in a suit. I keep picturing Donal Logue a la King Horik whenever he appears. The messier the mess gets, the more Horik-ish Svenson seems. I love it.

  Of course, the mystery gets solved by the end thanks to Shandy and his best friend's son-in-law's aunt (didja get that?), Helen. Along the way we get to know Shandy, Helen, and a supporting cast of characters from the campus community that leave me smiling (and sometimes shaking my head). You'll have to read it yourself if you want to find out whodunnit, of course, but once you have you can come back here (or to the Facebook page) to thank me and discuss.