Most Popular Books by CHARLOTTE MACLEOD

A Canadian Mountie investigates a murder among musicians in this mystery by the Edgar Award–nominated author of the Peter Shandy series. Although he is a decorated officer of the Mounted Police, Madoc Rhys’s tin ear has long been an embarrassment to his musically fixated family. But when his father’s orchestra needs a policeman, the Mountie gets a chance to make daddy proud. It began as pranks among the brass instruments, but something is rotten inside the Wagstaffe Symphony, and is about to graduate to something criminal. Called in to look into the tensions within the group, Madoc arrives just in time to see the French horn player keel over. The death appears natural, and the orchestra boards the plane to its next engagement. But when a storm forces them to make an emergency landing and take shelter in an eerie old lodge, the extent of the danger becomes clear. Madoc may never understand music, but he has a good ear for murder, and is about to show off his chops.

At Balaclava Agricultural College, a kidnapping and pig-napping are followed by murder Newlyweds Peter and Helen Shandy are picking out flatware when a pair of gun-toting hooligans bursts into the silversmith’s shop, emptying the safe and leaving with Helen as their hostage. Although the police recover Helen quickly, her professor husband is badly shaken by the ordeal. Early the next morning, the college’s head of animal husbandry frantically reports another hostage situation in progress. Belinda, the school’s beloved sow, has been kidnapped, and only Peter can bring home the bacon. There’s a possible witness to the pig-napping in Miss Flackley, the farrier, but before she can point Peter toward the vanished porker, she’s found dead in the barn’s mash feeder. By the time Peter discovers the link between the two heists, pigs may really fly.

Long-lost relatives and priceless jewels turn a wedding upside down For all the Kellings’ quirks, no other family in Boston is more adept at throwing a wedding. So when Max Bittersohn’s wife, Sarah Kelling, offers to organize his nephew’s nuptials, Max is smart enough to stay out of her way. But when the art-fraud investigator stumbles onto a family mystery, he is drawn into something far more serious than the question of who will catch the bouquet. Stolen years earlier, the priceless Kelling jewels were last seen in Amsterdam, so how did they end up among the wedding gifts? Max is trying to answer that question when a talkative burglar wallops him with a shovel in a failed attempt to rip off the rubies. Then, as the reception winds down, a hot-air balloon lands on the wedding tent, spilling out the Zickerys, a branch of the Kelling clan who prove even odder than the original strain. Family weddings are never easy, but for Max Bittersohn, this one could be murder.

A small town gardening—and archery—club must solve a murder case and save their town from developers in the first cozy mystery featuring Dittany Henbit. Anyone growing up in Lobelia Falls is taught to learn the elegant, ancient, and occasionally deadly art of shooting with a bow and arrow. Practicing the craft, freelance secretary Dittany Henbit is strolling through the woods with her bow at her side when she meets a surveyor making surveys where he shouldn’t. Dittany is giving him what-for when an arrow goes whizzing above her head. It is sharp enough to kill, and was not fired by accident, but Dittany wasn’t the target. She and the surveyor find Mr. Architrave, the head of the water department, not far away—lying dead beneath the trees that he loved so much. Progress is coming to Lobelia Falls, and one resident will do anything to stop it. But in a town where every child can shoot, how can Dittany discover who drew the killer bow?

When her Aunt Emma finds herself in the midst of murder while vacationing, Sarah Kelling and her husband Max Bittersohn do some long-distance detecting.

The Mystery Fancier, Volume Seven Number One, January-February 1983, contains: "Captain Joseph T. Shaw''s Black Mask Scrapbook," by E. R. Hagemann, "Detection by Other Means," by Bob Sampson, "Joe Orton''s and Tom Stoppard''s Burlesques of the Detective Genre," by Earl F. Bargainnier, "Bloody Balaclava: Charlotte MacLeod''s Campus Comedy Mysteries," by Jane S. Bakerman and "Spy Series Characters in Hardback, Part XIII," by Barry Van Tilburg.

The curtains almost close on an actor in this cozy gardening club mystery featuring amateur sleuth Dittany Henbit and her husband, Osbert Monk. When Jenson Thorbisher-Freep announces an amateur theatrical contest, the women in the Grub-and-Stake gardening club race to join in. They enlist Osbert Monk as their playwright—not only is he married to their club leader Dittany Monk, but he’s famous the world over as Lex Laramie, bestselling novelist of Westerns. Taking the legend of Dangerous Dan McGrew as his inspiration, Osbert delivers a rough draft faster than the Pony Express. Now all the Grub-and-Stakers have to do is cast it. To play McGrew, Dittany picks town cad Andrew McNaster, who has recently improved his manners in an attempt to woo Osbert’s aunt, Arethusa. The gunslinger’s performance gets a bit too real on opening night, though, when his prop bullets are replaced with real ones, and claim the toe of a fellow thespian. Is McNaster as nice as he pretends to be? Or has he taken his part too close to heart, and decided to become very dangerous indeed?

A murder in a yarn store leads to some wild and woolly adventures in this “energetic and merry” mystery (Publishers Weekly). When word gets out that Dittany Monk, the sleuthing gardener of Lobelia Falls, is expecting twins, every knitter in town races to Miss Jane Fuzzywuzzy’s Yarnery to begin work on a complete wardrobe of hats, booties, and tiny sweaters. One customer, however, has even more urgent business: the man with the gunshot wounds in his back. The victim stumbles out of a bullet-ridden car, dripping blood all over the freshly cleaned sidewalk, and dies with a peculiar phrase on his lips: “The raveled sleeve!” Before Miss Jane can offer advice on how to rescue an unraveling sweater, her unfortunate customer expires. To ensure her twins can be raised in a safe hometown, Dittany will have to get the yarn-store murder sewn up.

A widowed gardener meets a ghost from frontier times who’s out for revenge: “The screwball mystery is Charlotte MacLeod’s cup of tea” (Chicago Tribune). Zilla Trott is pouring her cat some chamomile tea when the drifter appears in her kitchen. He is grubby and crude—not at all the kind of person you’d usually find in the pleasant town of Lobelia Falls—but something about him intrigues the aging widow. Perhaps it’s his rugged good looks, or the way he seems to come from another time and place. Or perhaps it’s the fact that he’s been dead for nearly a century. When Lobelia Falls was in its rough-and-tumble frontier infancy, Hiram Jellyby was the best mule driver the town had ever seen, until an argument over a hidden cache of gold left him bleeding to death in a back alley. He returns in spectral form to secure a proper burial, and finds that in modern-day Lobelia Falls, no one knows more about turning the soil than Zilla Trott’s gardening buddies—all members of Dittany Monk’s fearless Grub-and-Stake Gardening and Roving Club.

When the seeds of a mystery are planted, gardening club member Dittany Henbit digs up clues in the cozy series from the international bestselling author. The Grub-and-Stakers gardening club has traditionally limited its activities to serving tea and gossiping about wildflowers, but when water department supervisor John Architrave is found murdered in the woods, club member Dittany Henbit turns to solving mysteries. After Architrave’s will reveals that he bequeathed his ramshackle old house to the Grub-and-Stakers, with instructions for it to be turned into a museum, Dittany resigns herself to weeks of cleaning out the mansion and sorting through donated town “artifacts.” The task turns interesting, however, the minute bodies start falling from the sky. The new curator is airing out the house’s attic when he takes his tumble off the roof. So unlikely is it that he would fall out the tiny attic window, that Dittany has no choice but to attempt to add one captured killer to the young museum’s permanent collection.

Zu Weihnachten gibt’s Mord – zwei Fälle in einem Band In ›Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh‹ findet ein Professor für Botanik und Nutzpflanzenzucht die Leiche seiner Nachbarin unter dem Weihnachtsbaum – er glaubt nicht an einen natürlichen Tod und beginnt in seiner unmittelbaren Umgebung, am Balaclava-College, zu ermitteln. Und der Täter kann sich warm anziehen: Mit wissenschaftlicher Präzision und dem ihm eigenen Scharfsinn nimmt sich der Professor des Mordfalls an ... Dass es auch anderenorts am Fest der Liebe hochhergeht, zeigt ›Kabeljau und Kaviar‹: Der sehr elitäre Club vom Geselligen Kabeljau gibt seine alljährliche Weihnachtsfeier. Nachdem erst eine wertvolle Amtskette verschwindet, sterben nicht weniger als drei Mitglieder der Bostoner Oberschicht. Zu allem Überfluss scheint der edle Kaviar vergiftet worden zu sein ...

Illustre Gäste, ein verfluchter Salon und mysteriöse Todesfälle ... Sarah Kelling braucht Geld – es ist immerhin nicht billig, eine Erbin zu sein, wenn man an besagtes Erbe nicht rankommt! Allein in dem altehrwürdigen Herrenhaus ihrer Familie beschließt sie daher, eine Pension zu eröffnen (für die sie heimlich selbst als Köchin fungiert). Dazu kommen Zimmermädchen Mariposa und deren Freund Charles – ein arbeitsloser Schauspieler, der in seiner Rolle als Butler voll aufgeht und das Bühnenbild für die illustren Gäste abrundet. Doch leider sterben diese Sarah einer nach dem anderen weg. Um dem angeblichen Fluch auf den Grund zu gehen, muss sich erneut mit Max Bittersohn zusammentun – seines Zeichens Detektiv, Kunstexperte und ausgerechnet auch noch einer der besagten Gäste ... Cozy Crime für Fans von Agatha Christie – mit einer guten Prise dunklem Humor!

This is the definitive Charlotte MacLeod collection, filled with the humour, plot twists and whimsy that have made her known and celebrated worldwide.

Kriminalroman.

On a midnight count, the site engineer for Balaclava College''s new TV station is murdered, but Professor Shandy suspects the victim should have been the college''s heiress benefactor.

A college student, invited to spend the summer with an uncle she has not seen since childhood, soon suspects he may be an impostor.