Rest You Merry by Charlotte MacLeod (1978)

I wanted to read one of the giants of the "cosy" subgenre of mystery fiction and happened across Charlotte MacLeod, a Canadian-American author active from the '60s through to the '90s. Honestly, I wasn't expecting much other than a half-decent detective plot and some light humour that your gran would appreciate. (The cosy is a trope-driven subgenre that mixes puzzle-based plots with comedy-of-manners, downplaying sex and violence in favour of escapism.) To my pleasant surprise, MacLeod is a much more cockeyed and self-aware writer than I'd anticipated.

The first in her series for which the amateur sleuth is an agricultural professor, Peter Shandy, Rest You Merry takes place during the festive season and begins with a rather mean-spirited prank. Bullied each year by the local harridans to join in with the Grand Illumination, a moneymaking exercise whereby Balaclava College's academic neighbourhood is festooned with fairy lights, Shandy pays to have his home so loaded with decoration it blinds the neighbours. He then disappears to spend Christmas on a cruise liner. Fate causes the cruise to be docked, however, and Shandy reluctantly returns... to find the chief neighbourhood harridan dead behind the sofa.

For the first entry in a series, Rest You Merry is strong. The comedy has a touch of "Boomer humour" about it, with lots of "take my wife... please" jokes, but it's done with a sharp wit. It plays on the trope of murder victims in cosy novels rarely being people that anyone would miss. At one point Shandy reflects, guiltily, on how he's more concerned by the disruption to his routine than the murder of his best friend's wife. The mystery itself is engaging and well-structured, knowing just when to escalate matters to crank up suspense. It's also nicely macabre in how the crimes are committed. Shandy represents the curmudgeonly sleuth done right. He's eccentric and grouchy but in a relatable manner.

The plotting's tight, showing that MacLeod knew how to plot this type of mystery. The only weak point is a romance subplot whose rapid progression has a whiff Harlequin romance. Yet as in part with the Boomer humour what saves it is the intelligent characterisation. Everyone feels like a real person. I'm just surprised that Peter Shandy never got a television show, especially given the amount of crap mystery shows that were being churned out in the '70s and '80s. (Mrs Columbo, anyone?)

(Available on Kindle)

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