Most Popular Books by Charlotte Macleod

The first three cozy mysteries in a series featuring a Royal Canadian Mountie and his resourceful wife from an international-bestselling author. The beloved sleuthing couple solves a trio of murder cases in the austere beauty of Canada’s New Brunswick. Originally published under the pseudonym Alisa Craig, these three tales are a witty look at murder in a small town—“the epitome of the ‘cozy’ mystery” (Mostly Murder). A Pint of Murder: When Janet Wadman realizes her friend Agatha was murdered with a jar of tainted green beans, her discovery leads to another untimely death. Height-challenged Mountie Madoc Rhys proves more capable than he looks, and Janet is duly impressed. Murder Goes Mumming: Madoc decides to ask Janet for her hand in marriage. But when the newly engaged couple finds their Christmas plans spoiled by murder, the investigating duo once again finds they have a gift for serving justice. A Dismal Thing to Do: Janet witnesses a terrible accident on the back roads of Canada. But after dashing into a nearby barn to get help, someone thanks her by stealing her car and then trying to kill her. Or were they? Madoc arrives and together they work to stop a deadly crime wave in its tracks.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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!

Sterben ist eine Kunst für sich – und nicht jeder ist Picasso... Detektiv Max Bittersohn wollte die junge Erbin Sarah Kelling eigentlich zu einer Vernissage in den kuriosen »Palazzo der Madam Wilkins« ausführen und die exquisite Kunstsammlung bewundern – rein freundschaftlich, versteht sich. Und es hätte ein zauberhafter Abend werden können ... wäre nicht der Museumswächter vom Balkon und in seinen Tod gestürzt. Schnell ist klar: Hier handelt es sich um Mord! Der Museumsdirektor Mr. Palmerston heuert Bittersohn an, dem Fall nachzugehen – und als Expertin in der Bostoner High Society ist Sarah Kelling natürlich mit von der Partie. Was verbirgt sich hinter den Kunstwerken im Palazzo? Wusste der Wachmann mehr, als er sollte? Und ist der Mörder Teil der illustren Gesellschaft, in der Sarah ein und ausgeht? Band 3 der exzentrischen »Boston Tea Crimes«-Reihe verspricht humorvolle Krimiunterhaltung für Fans von Richard Osman. Alle Bände der Reihe können unabhängig voneinander gelesen werden.

Sommerfrische und neue Mordfälle – so lässt es sich urlauben! Jüngst verlobt und längst verliebt wollen Sarah Kelling – Erbin von Beruf – und Detektiv Max Bittersohn eigentlich traute Zweisamkeit an der Küste genießen, doch ihnen stellen sich zwei große Probleme in den Weg: Das Diebesgut einer Einbruchsserie, das in dem sonst unbewohnten Kelling-Landsitz deponiert wurde – und Sarahs alte Tante und Anstandsdame Appie, die Gefahr läuft, das junge Paar zu Tode zu langweilen. Als dann jedoch gleich zwei von Appies alten Freundinnen kurz hintereinander ermordet werden, zeigen die anklagenden Finger der feinen Gesellschaft auf den einzigen Außenseiter: Max Bittersohn, in dessen Zimmer auch noch die Mordwaffe gefunden wird. Sarah muss ermitteln, um ihren Verlobten zu retten – und ihren Urlaub! Band 4 der »Bosten Tea Crimes«-Reihe, in der alle Titel unabhängig gelesen werden können – für Fans von Richard Osman.

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

A Sarah Kelling mystery.

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.