RogerBW's Blog

A Pint of Murder, Charlotte MacLeod 14 March 2015

1980, cosy American detective fiction; first of MacLeod's novels (as "Alisa Craig") of Madoc and Janet Rhys. In a small Canadian town, the local old biddy has died of eating her own contaminated preserves. But was she really that careless?

Well, no, of course not. Her neighbour Janet Wadman, visiting her brother to recover from appendicitis and a broken heart, reports her suspicions to the local doctor; then he ends up dead too. And then a house burns down. But who is the criminal: the town's miser, who insists on being given some old patent that nobody else knows about? His son, who's pining for the doctor's daughter? The hired girl who listens at keyholes and is no better than she should be?

All this takes a certain amount of time to unfold, and the start's quite slow, not helped by giving us lots of people to keep track of (and while their relationships are mentioned their ages are often a bit unclear). Eventually (nearly half-way through the book), a plain-clothes Mountie is called in, though his cover doesn't last long. Madoc Rhys does his best to untangle ancient family enmities and solve the puzzle before someone else dies.

As with Rest You Merry, there's a certain amount of glorying in the horribleness of people, whether or not they turn out to be murderers. The doctor's wife is the self-elected social queen of the town, obsessed with appearance, so it doesn't help that her daughter made an unwise young marriage and is back in town with an eleven-year-old son and no husband. Even the town marshal and the local undertaker, while apparently on the side of right, need to live in the place once this is all over, and can't be ready to throw around accusations until they can back them up.

The mystery itself is decently handled: a great big obvious clue is given very nearly at the beginning, with flashing lights and signs proclaiming that CLUE SEASON has begun, and it's then almost entirely neglected until the end. Everyone's ready to think the worst of everyone else, and often they're right.

As one can tell from the series title, at least in later printings, a romance is also a feature (S. S. van Dine would presumably despise it). While we get that almost entirely from Madoc's side, and it mostly consists of his thinking Janet's wonderful but not doing anything about it because he's on duty, it's an unusually convincing one; these are both real, complicated and unglamorous people who might reasonably end up taking an interest in each other.

This is another for my large pile of books that aren't exceptional, but are competently done, and that I find enjoyable.

[Buy this at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]

See also:
Rest You Merry, Charlotte MacLeod

Series: Madoc and Janet Rhys | Next in series: Murder Goes Mumming

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime crystal cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 essen 2024 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2021 hugo 2022 hugo 2023 hugo 2024 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1