Patricia Wentworth: More Than Miss Silver

I don't read all that many cozy mysteries, but I have a soft spot for Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver series. Miss Silver is a retired teacher who may be sitting in a corner, knitting, when visitors come to call on a country house.

The visitors are told Miss Silver is an old family friend or relative, and they assume that the family is providing a little bit of comfort and company for an old lady living in genteel poverty. Little do they suspect that Miss Silver is unobtrusively gathering information that will reveal a blackmailer or even a killer.

I read the whole Miss Silver series (32 books!) back in the 1970s, when they
were already decades old and Patricia Wentworth had been dead for well over a decade. In the last couple of years, I've enjoyed revisiting some of them in audiobook versions, perfectly performed by Diana Bishop.

What I didn't realize is that Patricia Wentworth wrote many other mystery books outside the Miss Silver series; a couple of dozen standalones and three short series. Luckily for us, in addition to the Miss Silvers, Open Road Integrated Media is reissuing the other books in ePub and Kindle ebook formats. Here are the series titles:

The Ernest Lamb series

The Blind Side

When the handsome but evil Ross Craddock is found killed with his own gun, there is a wealth of suspects who had the motive to kill.  The London Metropolitan Police department's Inspector Ernest Lamb, and young Detective Frank Abbott have their work cut out for them.



Who Pays the Piper

Lucas Dale is determined to break up the engagement of Susan Lenox and Bill Carrick, so that he can have Susan for himself. A spot of blackmail seems to have done the trick, until Dale is found murdered. Lamb and Abbott suspect Carrick, but soon find that there are quite a few others who wished Dale dead.





Pursuit of a Parcel

Lamb and Abbott become enmeshed in a deadly game of World War II espionage, with agents and double agents, mysterious parcels and a beautiful young woman in danger.

The Benbow Smith series

Fool Errant

A mysterious woman warns Hugo Ross not to take a job with an eccentric inventor, but Hugo needs the money. Soon he finds himself embroiled in a world of espionage and danger, and calls on Benbow Smith of the Foreign Office for help.



Danger Calling

Benbow Smith recruits Lindsay Trevor, a former British intelligence agent, to rejoin the clandestine services to help catch a master criminal.

Walk With Care

Benbow Smith becomes involved in an investigation to uncover the forces working to eliminate voices in favor of disarmament.




Down Under

When bride-to-be Anne Carew disappears, her desperate fiancé, Captain Oliver Loddon, contacts Benbow Smith. Smith believes this is just the latest of a series of abductions over the past few years by one man, but the police disagree. Loddon will risk his own life to save Anne.

Frank Garrett series

Dead or Alive

On the very day Meg O'Hara asks her Irish spy husband, Robin, for a divorce, he disappears. Time passes and he's presumed dead, but then Meg receives a message suggesting otherwise. Frank Garrett of the British Foreign Office investigates, along with Bill Coverdale, who has been in love with Meg for years.

Rolling Stone

While Frank Garrett investigates a series of thefts of valuable artworks, his nephew goes undercover to penetrate an international gang of dangerous thieves.

There are too many other Wentworth mysteries to list here, even when you exclude the Miss Silvers. But if you want to see which ones are now available from Open Road, just head here.

If you enjoy romance novels, Wentworth started out as a romance writer and Open Road has a couple of those as well: A Marriage Under the Terror, set during the French Revolution, and A Fire Within, which hints at the Miss Silver to come.

Note: Open Road Integrated Media provided me with review e-copies of Fool Errant, Dead or Alive and The Blind Side.

Images source: openroadmedia.com

Review of Judith Flanders's A Bed of Scorpions

A Bed of Scorpions, by Judith Flanders (Minotaur Books, March 1, 2016)

Samantha “Sam” Clair is an editor at a small London book publisher. The constants in Sam’s life are her colleagues, her powerful solicitor mother, Helen, her fatherly upstairs neighbor, Mr. Rudiger, and now her boyfriend, Jake, a homicide detective with London’s Metropolitan Police. If you want to know how Sam came to be in a romance with a police detective, read the first book in the series, A Murder of Magpies.

All seems well in Sam’s life this London summer. The weather is fine, her relationship with Jake has reached the almost-living-together stage, and the only fly in the ointment is the concern at the office that their company might be sold. That is, until Sam has lunch with an old friend, Aidan. Aidan, an art gallery owner, is distraught over his business partner’s having just been found shot.

Is it suicide, murder? No surprise, Jake is assigned to investigate and, of course, questions arise about whether this could have something to do with the gallery and Aidan. Since Aidan isn’t just an old friend of Sam's, he’s a former boyfriend, things quickly become awkward with Jake. Is it her desire to help Aidan that makes Sam start asking questions, or is it her crime fiction addiction that compels her? For whatever reason, she’s soon knee-deep in her own investigation.

Sam is an entertaining character. She’s the opposite of her super-confident, supremely groomed, socially connected powerhouse of a mother. Sam is a klutz, her wardrobe is marginal, she likes to lounge around at home, reading and going to bed early. She’s an amusingly snarky observer of her own foibles and everyone else’s.

Read the book

Though this is a cozy mystery, that doesn’t mean it’s just a bit of fluff. The plot is engrossing, with clever twists and turns, and details about the inside workings of art dealerships and publishers that are informative and add unique features to the story. And I can’t tell you anything about the climax except that it’s both inventive and hair-raising.

It’s not absolutely necessary to read the first book in the series before this one, but it’s a good idea if you can.

Image sources: Amazon.com, bbc.co.uk, Wikipedia.

Have Yourself a Cozy Little Christmas

My daughter used to sing a little Christmas shopping ditty to the tune of Jingle Bells that started "Schlepping  through the slush/ With eight bags in my hands/Four more stores to go/And  sleet comes down in bands." We would have to stop frequently for nourishment and to thaw out our feet and check our lists in those days.

Nowadays, I spend less time schlepping and more time clicking––gotta love that internet!––but the principle is the same: holiday gift shopping, however you do it, is hard work, and accomplishing all or part of it earns the shopper a break and a modest reward. Warm hearths, good books, and chocolate aprés shopping are appropriate.

Dogs and mountains make a wonderful cozy combination, and Christmas seems particularly suited to those pleasures. In Donna Ball's Silent Night, Raine Stockton and her rescue dog Cisco are facing their first Christmas with no human companions since her divorce from Buck, the sheriff in their small North Carolina town. She is surprised when Miles, a rich developer smitten with her, shows up for the annual Christmas parade (she and Cisco are herding the live sheep) with a sullen adolescent daughter in tow whose mother is in Brazil on her third honeymoon.

A murder, a live newborn showing up in the town's Christmas crèche, and Miles's bratty daughter, Melanie, contrive to keep the holiday season full. Author Donna Ball obviously loves dogs, and dog lovers have followed this series with much interest, as it provides a lot of information about rescue dog training and use in the wild Appalachian mountains.

If you crave a tongue-in-cheek English village cozy, Andrea Frazer's Belchester Chronicles are light and amusing. In White Christmas with a Wobbly Knee, Lady Amanda Golightly and her friend, Hugo Cholmondley-Crighton-Crump, have decided to open her stately home to tours. To practice, they invite a few old friends in for drinks and tours on Boxing Day.

When one of the guests, a writer who is penning an exposé that he claims will blow the village wide open, is found dead in the library––murdered by five different methods––plans are changed abruptly for everyone. And if you think your relatives are difficult at Christmas, Lady Amanda's mother, declared dead many years ago, shows up unexpectedly to visit while her villa in France is being renovated. This is a silly, charming series; perfect for a mildly bibulous evening by the fire.

Nero Wolfe is far from the first detective who springs to mind at Christmas, but Rex Stout's And Four to Go contains four short stories set around various holidays.

In Christmas Party, sheer desperation drives the maestro to folly. A friend of Archie's wants to pressure her boyfriend to pop the question, and asks for his help. Archie produces a faked marriage license and agrees to escort her to a party where she will announce their "engagement."

When Wolfe wants Archie to do something for him instead of attending the party, the annoyed sidekick produces the license and discusses his upcoming nuptials with his flabbergasted boss. To assess this catastrophe in the making, Wolfe leaves his brownstone and attends the party disguised in a Santa suit. When a man is found murdered, the mortified misogynist flees rather than be unmasked, thus becoming Inspector Cramer's prime suspect.

The Cat Who Turned On and Off is probably my favorite in the late Lilian Jackson Braun's lengthy series featuring James Qwilleran and his ace cat detectives, Koko and Yum Yum. Qwilleran, a recovering alcoholic and reporter for The Daily Fluxion, acquired both of the beautiful Siamese cats by default when their respective owners were murdered. As the story opens, the three are sharing a room in a hotel one scant step above sleazy. Qwil is in a bit of a bind; he has no furniture so wants to find a furnished apartment, but can't find a landlord willing to risk his furniture to a pair of cats with all their claws. Hoping to win a cash prize offered for the best Christmas story, he sells his editor on a series about Junktown, a section of the city with numerous antique and junk shops.

When Qwil attends an auction of the stock of a dealer killed in an accident and learns that the victim's apartment over the shop of junkers Iris and C.C. Cobb is available, he jumps at the opportunity. As any cat owner could tell you, mayhem and the occasional theft of small objects ensue. But murder is over the top, and dainty Yum Yum, an accomplished thief, keeps bringing curious items that suggest a motive for the crime.

This third book in the series was written in the 1960s, and the author took a 30-year hiatus after it before writing another. Followers of the series will know that Qwil's situation changed dramatically after he met his billionaire godmother, but these few early books about his hardscrabble life "down below" and his introduction to Koko and Yum Yum have a special charm for the season.

The weather has been both unsettled and uncivil over much of the US and Europe in the run up to Christmas this year. Shopping and traveling plans have been disrupted, and shoppers are scrambling for those last few items even as airlines frantically reschedule and reroute.

I hope that your plans and homes are not in too much disarray; if they are, remember just how much disarray the original cause of this celebration brought to the unsuspecting world! Joy and peace to all this season, and whether you are shopping or mopping, wrapping or cooking today, try to find a little time to be kind to yourself as well. Merry Christmas, all!

What they said...

Better Off Dead

Write what you know is an exhortation (attributed to Mark Twain) to all who put pen to paper––or voice to Siri. There is some debate about what this really means, but I take it at face value. One of my favorite sub-genres, if there is such a word, is writers writing about writers and, even better, mystery authors writing about people in their own line of work. They give a little insight into the process of creating memorable characters and their dastardly deeds.

In Stop Press, by Michael Innes, written in 1939, Timothy Eliot is an undergraduate at Oxford with an uneasy mind as the end of the year approaches, and he comes to Professor Gerald Winter for some help. Timmy feels that his father, Richard Eliot, is headed for the loony bin.

Mr. Richard Eliot is a well-known writer of 30-odd books revolving around the exploits of a character known as "the Spider." The Spider began his adventures as a master crook but, over the years, morphed into a dashing detective. The Spider belongs to that class of sleuths who are of ample means, debonair personality and a bit smarter than the police. Recently, however, because of some unusual occurrences in the region of Rust Hall, the Eliot family manor, Mr. Eliot has been wondering if the Spider has come alive.

To be specific there was a burglary that resembled one the Spider had thought of––but that plot was only imagined by Mr. Eliot; never published. Other events occur in the same vein, increasing Mr. Eliot's anxiety. As Timmy would have it, "it was as if the inanimate seeming husk of his father’s books had trembled and cracked, and from the chrysalis there had struggled a living thing."

Coming up at Rust Hall is the annual celebration that the publisher puts on for the Spider's birthday. This year is to be a special occasion, because the Spider has turned 21. Many people are descending on the manor, including other writers, translators, an actor who reprises the role of the Spider on the screen, and many others. Timmy is convinced there will be trouble over the weekend and asks his tutor, Mr. Winter, to come along as well.

Timmy has an older sister, Belinda, who works at nearby Rust Manor with her friend, Patricia Appleby, who is also invited for the weekend. Throughout the course of the first evening, Patricia picks up on some vibes, as several Spider-like rather cruel jokes are played on the guests––and she fears worse is to come. She sends out an SOS to her brother, John Appleby, a chief inspector at Scotland Yard, to come as soon as he can.

Appleby arrives in a dramatic fashion, after all of the lights of the manor were suddenly extinguished as if by magic, and the party was smothered by a frightening darkness. Appleby fixes the lighting problem with the aid of a flashlight and fuse because after all, electrical problems were quite common in old houses in those pre-World War II years. He joins the house party, because he is intrigued by the puzzle. Somehow, someone is privy to the inner thoughts and plots of an author who guarded his secrets carefully, and who furthermore claims that the prankster  has becomes more menacing, as he is now also having thoughts involving the Spider that never entered Mr. Eliot's mind.

John Innes Mackintosh Stewart was born in Scotland, educated at Oxford––like his protagonist––and taught English at many universities. He was a great scholar, and his erudition comes across in his writing. He is the only author I read regularly who uses words I have to look up every few pages. A few of my favorites from this volume were congeries, meaning collections or aggregations; and gnomic, meaning mysterious and often incomprehensible, yet seemingly wise. Nothing to do with eels or gnomes. Innes is such a wordsmith that some sentences are crafted to have a fuller meaning after the words sink in and settle for a bit. Speed-reading will not do for this author.

The peek behind the curtain in this novel is when a character in Stop Press elucidates what makes mysteries successful. For example: "everything is subject to the rules, which the reader knows. There is generally a puzzle that the reader can solve by means of the rules and that implies that in the little universe of the book the reader is the master.  The books cater for the need of security. Real life is horribly insecure because God is capable of keeping a vital rule or two up his sleeve and giving us unpleasant surprises as a result. The author Mr. Eliot, the author isn't allowed to do that. When we figure out the puzzles we get a pleasant sense of intellectual superiority. Knowing the rules we can control them if we want to." Dare we presume that this is how Innes feels as well?

Robert Barnard, a prolific author all of whose works I hope to read eventually, takes several different pokes at the profession of writing. In Death of a Mystery Writer, he targets the aptly-named Sir Oliver Fairleigh-Stubbs, a rotund best-selling mystery novelist who is despised by all who know him, because he is an overbearing bully. His books are quite enjoyable, even though readers never feel they can admit their admiration of the author in public. When the author is murdered, there are almost too many suspects. The plot is further enlivened by a missing-manuscript mystery.

On the romance front, Barnard sent his protagonist, Perry Trethowan, to Norway in The Cherry Blossom Corpse, where he accompanies his sister to a Romantic Novelists convention. Trethowan expected chilly weather, fanciful authors and flowery language. He never expected that beneath the facade of these writers, mostly ladies, there would be such malice; back-biting and bitter rivalry lead to the murder of one of the group.

A Hovering of Vultures is the sad tale of the death of a pair of literary writers whose tomes were so dreary that the shocking details of their last moments gave them more acclaim than their lives' work. Barnard's Charlie Peace tackled this case. Read all about it here.

Another novelist who seems to think fictional writers are better off dead is G. M. Malliet. In her Death of a Cozy Writer, there is an Agatha Christie-like gathering during which a wealthy, successful cozy mystery writer––who is also the pits as a human being––meets his fate while a storm blankets the house with snow. Cornish detective Detective Chief Inspector St. Just and his partner, Detective Sergeant Fear, search for Colonel Mustard and the candlestick. Humor and plot twists keep the book alive.

In Death and the Lit Chick, Malliet lampoons mystery writers again, with the sharpest point needling the wildly successful young author of the chick lit mystery. Along with Kimberlee Kalder, there is a group of writers at a Scottish castle where St. Just happens to be staying. The rivals for the bestseller rankings are damsel-in-distress novels (that are fading in popularity with the reading public), spy thrillers (as dated as the Berlin Wall), dark-and-edgy novels (with no edge), and a weird detective story set in prehistoric times. The castle is surrounded by the traditional moat, the drawbridge is up, the lights go out during a storm and, you guessed it, a certain mystery author turns up dead, presenting St. Just with a murder to solve.

I am intrigued by the turnabout where writers of the past are being brought to fictional life, putting on gumshoes and donning deerstalker hats. Several late authors are solving mysteries in their own series. Dorothy Parker is known for being part of New York's famous Algonquin Round Table of the 1920s, a regular gathering of authors, critics and others in the book trade whose barbed witticisms led to their other nickname, the "Vicious Circle." In the first of his mysteries featuring Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table group, author J. J. Murphy turns Dorothy into a Nosey Parker when she discovers a body under the round table who is dead as a doornail, not dead drunk. I might give this series a try.

There are several other real-life authors who have turned into fictional sleuths. Nicola Upson has resurrected Josephine Tey and put her to work. Gyles Brandreth has revitalized Oscar Wilde's wit and personality and recreated him as a sleuth with great success. And, finally, Jane Austen has crawled out of her grave again to put clues together and solve crimes in Stephanie Barron’s series.

All of these stories, in their way, let us know a bit about what authors think of their craft. For some reason, I seem to find books with the authors as victims a bit more enlightening. They give me an appreciation of what an author has to deal with when it comes to the public, publishers and publicity, and the problem of protagonists they are tired of but who are still their bread and butter. They all face the changing times and mores as we do and must make interesting stories out of them.

Lost Girls

The Gray and Guilty Sea by
Jack Nolte and Scott William Carter

What happens to tough guys when they retire? Garrison Gage was a smart-mouthed FBI-trained P.I. in the Big Apple, one of the best and most successful in the business. After a very high profile mob case that he worked with the FBI left his wife dead and him permanently crippled, Gage, still on the right side of 50, lost his taste for the city and the business and moved as far away from both as he could. In the small town of Barnacle Bluffs on the rocky coast of Oregon, he has lived anonymously––almost as a recluse––for the last five years, bitterly nursing his grief and self-loathing. He has no phone, no television, no computer; preferring to get his news late from the few newspapers that he takes, or from his housekeeper. The only friend from his past that he has stayed in touch with is retired FBI agent Alex Cortez, happily puttering in his nearby used bookstore.

Gage found the girl one winter evening when he was walking on the beach with his cane, cursing his infirmity. She looked to be no older than 20, and was wearing only a t-shirt and black lace panties. Her eyes stared blindly at the sunset and her limbs were tangled in seaweed. She hadn't been dead very long, but she had been banged up a bit and there were abrasions on her wrists and ankles. Around one ankle a ring of dolphins had been tattooed.

Despite widespread police appeals for information, the girl remains unidentified and the misanthropic Gage, whose wife Janet had been drowned by the thugs who crippled him, finds himself haunted, and unwillingly becomes involved in the investigation. Carmen Hornbridge, editor and factotum of the local newspaper, helps in his research. As the town becomes aware of  his investigations, he comes home one night to find the chilling message "THER AR OTHER GRLS" carefully spelled out in pebbles on his porch.

A sub-theme of this story involves Gage's  housekeeper, Mattie, who is dying of inoperable cancer. Her only living relative is her granddaughter Zoe, a 16-year-old who can match Gage in rudeness. Mattie says, "Don't mind Zoe. She's not really that rude. She tells me she acts that way 'cause she's a nihilist. I don't know what that is exactly but I figure it's like having the cramps all the time." Anyone who has raised a daughter through that age can sympathize! Zoe wants Mattie to sign documents emancipating her, but Mattie wants Gage to assume guardianship of the girl. Gage, who has no children and never wanted any, is as appalled as Zoe at the request.

This was a good, tightly-written procedural with amusing and credible dialogue. It reminded me of a John D. MacDonald novel, except that Garrison Gage is a darker and more complex (and much ruder) character than MacDonald's Travis McGee. All of the major characters were well developed and believable, and Gage's reluctant re-engagement with life is as much a part of the story as the mystery. There is some mildly steamy sex, and the ability of the reclusive protagonist to withstand numerous incidents of being beaten up and drugged raised my eyebrows a bit. Nonetheless, I immediately ordered the sequel, A Desperate Place for Dying, and hope that the author will make a series of the fedora-wearing, cane-wielding, misanthropic Gage.

Clare Prentice seems as far from a lost girl as you can get in Martha Powers's Conspiracy of Silence. At 27, she has it made. She has a good job with a Chicago literary magazine and is engaged to the politically ambitious scion of a prominent wealthy family. When her doctor happily reports her nodules as benign––Clare's mother had died of cancer just a year ago––and suggests that she might want to look up the health history of her birth parents, Clare's entire world goes askew. No one had ever told her that she was adopted, and her mother's papers didn't indicate it. (Apparently in some states a new––false!––birth certificate can be issued when a child is adopted.) The only slender clue to her parentage may be the class ring included among her mother Rose's jewelry. None of the information she has, including her mother's birthdate, turn out to be accurate. Neither she nor her mother appear to have ever existed!

Five months later, following her only clue, she drives into the town of Grand Rapids in northern Minnesota. She had broken her engagement to Bruce almost with relief after some cutting remarks from his mother about potential dirty secrets in her background affecting his future; so Clare focused on her research and the interview she had scheduled with a reclusive local Pulitzer Prize winner. The lakeside cottage she rented from an aunt of her best friend, Gail, is charming, and Ruth, the aunt, is fortuitously the head librarian in town.

Pulitzer winner Nate Hanssen, sweetened by his friendship with her editor, grudgingly schedules an interview, but Clare's personal research is not going as well. Someone does not want old events stirred up and is prepared to do whatever is necessary to keep the secret of the old murder that she discovers, and in which she may have been involved. Her memory of long-ago events that led to a great miscarriage of justice emerge slowly, mostly through nightmares. A dog that has befriended her is beaten and injured, and there are several other apparent accidents to people who had information to share with her about her parents.

This was a nice, light, fast-moving cozy, a good summer afternoon read, although Clare's tendency to get lightheaded and faint under extreme stress got a little annoying. While I had easily guessed part of the dénouement, the identity of the killer still came as a surprise. By the way, Waldo the dog is recovering nicely and thanks you for asking.

A Holiday Getaway with Charlotte MacLeod

When holiday pressures seem overwhelming and the people with whom you spend your holidays start to wear, spending a few hours with some of Charlotte MacLeod's over-the-top characters and zany plots can help to cleanse your mental palate and recover your sense of humor and holiday spirit.

In The Family Vault, members of the illustrious but eccentric Kelling family of Boston tend to marry each other––mostly, young Sarah Kelling (née Kelling) suspects, to keep the money in the family. When Sarah––who had been educated at home like a prim Victorian lady––was orphaned, the family couldn't wait to marry her off to her devastatingly handsome fifth cousin and guardian, Alexander, who still treated her more like a beloved adolescent daughter than a wife. Her father's will had left all her assets in Alexander's hands until she turned 27, and he was to give her "whatever allowance he saw fit" until that time.

One bitter morning, Sarah waits in one of Boston's historic graveyards for her cousin Dolph and the representative of the Historical Society. Recently deceased Great-Uncle Frederick had insisted on being buried in the old family vault, unused for over a hundred years. To the surprise of all concerned, the vault holds the uncoffined body of a notorious burlesque performer named Ruby Redd, adored by several generations of Kelling men, who had disappeared 30 years earlier. The skeleton is still clad in Ruby's corset and red high-heeled boots, and its teeth inset with her trademark rubies. As one witness reminisces, "I ain't never seen anybody else struttin' down Washington Street with a grin on her puss like a row of taillights on a wet night."

This is the readers' first introduction to the disparate Kelling and Bittersohn clans. Inbred Back Bay Boston will never be the same when the cash-strapped Sarah converts her heavily-mortgaged mansion into an upscale boarding house, complete with part-time butler, Charles (a "resting" actor). The setting and characters provide endless opportunities for murderous plots and well intentioned cultural misunderstandings. While the stories are light, and rife with over-the-top characters, MacLeod doesn't hesitate to pile on the bodies in this first in a memorable series.

Peter Shandy, plant geneticist and professor at Balaclava Agricultural College in rural Massachusetts, is probably MacLeod's best-known protagonist. In Rest You Merry, bachelor Peter, who has for years resisted the pressure of the ladies of the Grand Illumination Committee to turn his house into a Christmas wonderland, finally yields with a vengeance. After hiring a service to turn his house into a tasteless extravaganza complete with waving Santas and obnoxious carols played very loudly, he escapes to a tramp steamer for a quiet holiday. When the steamer breaks down and naval rescue is required, he ruefully arrives home on Christmas night––only to discover his neighbor, head of the Illumination Committee and wife of his best friend, dead on his living-room floor.

Campus police and the sheriff believe that Jemima's death was the result of a fall from a stepladder, as she attempted to remove some of his more gaudy decorations, but Peter and her husband Tim think otherwise. The tall woman, they agreed, could easily have reached the decorations without the stepladder. And a bowl of 33 marbles, given to Peter––a compulsive counter––by a niece, had been knocked from a display shelf across the room. Only 32 marbles were recovered; where was the missing one? No one had seen Jemima for several days, but it wasn't unusual for her to flit around the neighborhood at all hours, organizing everything and everyone. Tim had been curious when she hadn't shown up Christmas morning to exchange presents, but not worried. Not until there is another death are the police willing to listen to Peter.

While MacLeod, who also wrote under the name Alisa Craig, published her last book in 1998 and died in 2005, new readers continue to stumble on her zany mysteries and improbable characters with cries of glee. Her plots are always well constructed and clues are offered for the attentive reader, but I usually miss them because I am enjoying the characters too much. Both of these series––many books long out of print––are finally available as ebooks, and have I begun to rebuild my rogues' gallery of this gentle but very humorous author's characters. Her characters make even my more exotic relations seem relatively sane and tame!