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    Rest You Merry
    Rest You Merry
    Rest You Merry
    Ebook326 pages5 hours

    Rest You Merry

    By Charlotte MacLeod

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    A Christmas scrooge discovers a murdered librarian in this holiday novel from an Edgar Award finalist known for her “witty, literate, and charming” mysteries (Publishers Weekly).
     
    Each December, the faculty of Balaclava Agricultural College goes wild with holiday decorations. The entire campus glitters with Christmas lights, save for one dark spot: the home of professor Peter Shandy. But after years of resisting the school’s Illumination festival, Shandy suddenly snaps, installing a million-watt display of flashing lights and blaring music perfectly calculated to drive his neighbors mad. Then the horticulturalist flees town, planning to spend Christmas on a tramp steamer. It’s not long before he feels guilty about his prank and returns home to find his lights extinguished—and a dead librarian in his living room.
     
    Hoping to avoid a scandal, the school’s head asks Shandy, sometimes detective, to investigate the matter quietly. After all, Christmas is big business, and the town needs the cash infusion that typically comes with the Illumination. But as Shandy will soon find out, there’s a dark side to even the whitest of white Christmases.
     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMysteriousPress.com Open Road
    Release dateNov 6, 2012
    ISBN9781453277553
    Author

    Charlotte MacLeod

    Charlotte MacLeod (1922–2005) was an international bestselling author of cozy mysteries. Born in Canada, she moved to Boston as a child and lived in New England most of her life. After graduating from college, she made a career in advertising, writing copy for the Stop & Shop Supermarket Company before moving on to Boston firm N. H. Miller & Co., where she rose to the rank of vice president. In her spare time, MacLeod wrote short stories, and in 1964 published her first novel, a children’s book called Mystery of the White Knight. In Rest You Merry (1978), MacLeod introduced Professor Peter Shandy, a horticulturist and amateur sleuth whose adventures she would chronicle for two decades. The Family Vault (1979) marked the first appearance of her other best-known characters: the husband and wife sleuthing team Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn, whom she followed until her last novel, The Balloon Man, in 1998.

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    Reviews for Rest You Merry

    4/5

    145 ratings11 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Middle-aged professor living in a small town college community hates the ugly displays of outside Christmas decorations and decides this year he will out do everyone and hires decorators to come and put up the most excessive display with blaring Christmas music. He then takes off for a Caribbean cruise. However, his ships has to dock one day out because of mechanical problems and he heads home to find a dead body in his living room. The wife of his best friend was murdered and left in his house. The friend leaves to be with his daughter and this introduces Peter to Helen who will house-sit during the holidays and help solve the murder with the professor.
    • 3/5
      This was a pretty good book. Peter Shandy is a professor at a college where two murders occur and it's up to him to solve them.
    • 5/5
      tongue-in-cheek, cozy-mystery, witty, university, multiple-murder, romantic, suspense, amateur-sleuth, verbal-humor, situational-humor, snow-season, pranks, boozy-characters*****Peter Shandy is fed up with all the nagging to "illuminate" his little house in the academic neighborhood, so he pulls his own prank on them. But his escape is cut short. And THEN he comes to find the body of a particular busy body in his own living room and has good reason that the death was not a simple accident of her invading his home. He and the deceased's husband agree, but the husband must be off to greet a brand new grandchild (and escape all the gossipy wives), but he does send a shit-tail relative to house-sit. And then...The whole thing is a great hoot and the deadpan presentation by John McClain turns it into a real howler!
    • 4/5
      Rest You Merry by Charlotte Macleod is a 2012 Mysterious Press/Open Road publication. (Originally published in 1978)I’ve been curious about this series for ages, and I love reading through old cozy mystery series. The downside to that is trying to locate all the installments, since many of these older books are out of print or are priced outside my budget. Thankfully, I found a healthy number of Macleod’s Peter Shandy series in digital format on Hoopla while looking for holiday mysteries. As it turns out, this is both a Christmas themed book and the first book in the series, so it seemed the perfect time to dive in and test the waters. For a book originally published in 1978 it held up well. There are a few remarks made that we might frown on, and some phrases popped up that were pretty funny. “When can we split for lunch?” Split? LOL! But the best one was referencing law enforcement as the ‘Fuzz’. That one made me laugh out loud. But, overall, the book is not all that dated. The mystery is solid, and I rather liked Peter Shandy. There were a few characters to keep up with, which was a little trying at times, and for a cozy mystery I was a little surprised at some of the language- no F-bombs or anything, but occasionally some words went beyond ‘mild language’. Other than that, this book got the series off to a good start. I have no idea if reading in order is required- I rather doubt it, to be honest- I’ll have to go with what books are available, though, either way. But I will most definitely read more books in the series whenever possible. 4 stars
    • 4/5
      Laugh out loud funny, bachelor Professor Peter Shandy, must deal with Christmas, murder and an the unprecedented attention of the females in his sphere of colleagues at Balaclava Agricultural College in this biblo-mystery, when he first must inform his best friend that his wife was found dead by Peter after performing a prank on his neighbors.
    • 4/5
      3.5 starsPeter Shandy is a professor at a small college. Many of the faculty live close to each other, and at Christmas they go all out in their neighbourhood to decorate. It’s called the Illumination Festival and it attracts people out to see the lights. While Peter is away, there is a Christmas party. When Peter returns, he finds the assistant librarian dead in his house. It appears she was trying to fix some decorations and she fell. But, on looking closer, Peter doesn’t think it was an accident. The last time the librarian was seen, she was leaving the party. I quite liked this. It’s a quick read and, unfortunately, the first in a series. I will continue on (if I can find the next book(s), as this one was originally published in 1978). I don’t read a lot of Christmas-themed books, so the Christmas-y stuff was kind of fun, too.
    • 4/5
      A straightforward murder mystery that doesn't make its reader think, but just enjoy it. An easy read that doesn't take much concentration to keep the characters straight, and it's cozy setting and late 70's time period makes for a nice, pleasant get away from the regular world for a few hours.
      3.5 stars, and recommended to anyone to likes/loves "cozy mysteries".
    • 5/5
      I don't have enough good words to say about this mystery! It's funny, it's witty, it's warm, it's cozy and the mystery is excellent! One of my all-time favorite cozies.The setting is at Balaclava College, a small agricultural college with a cast of kooky characters that keep you amused from the start. Professor Peter Shandy, the fifty-some year old hero, and Helen, the 40 something year old heroine, are two of the most pleasant characters in the mystery world. You'll wish you lived next door to them by the end of the book.The mystery itself takes a plenty of time to unfold and that is good because I enjoy the story so much I don't want it to end too quickly. I'm so glad that Charlotte MacLeod wrote a series about Peter and Helen so you can spend a lot more time with them.There's nothing slick or modern or hard-bitten about this book. It's pure comfort food for the cozy reader.
    • 1/5
      A variety of LTers I generally agree with have recently been speaking with fondness about this book. I thought it would be an excellent fit, as I graduated from an Agricultural College. Sadly, I found this story painfully lame and poorly written. I found no connection with these comic book characters. The mystery is sluggish, and nobody cares; everyone in the story is relieved that Jemima Ames is gone. The next victim is passed over lightly as well. The crime motivation is juvenile and too twisty. Ugh.
    • 4/5
      Substance: Mayhem at a minor college during Christmas. The mystery was fair, but MacLeod leaves out essential clues and produces motives late in the day. The characters are a hoot and the improbably-idyllic romance a treat.Style: Some of the situations and dialogue reminded me of Connie Willis's Twisted Tupperware Tales (my own name for her warped-reality short stories), crossed with a cast reminiscent of John Putnam Thatcher's colleagues.Not a bad combination. NOTE: Large-print edition; took only 3 hours to read.
    • 2/5
      I picked this up purely for the rather cracktastic premise -- mild-mannered professor goes slightly mad, outdoes himself on the uberannoying Christmas decorations, and then flees on a cruise, leaving his neighbors to deal with the aftereffects -- which, frankly, made my grinchy little heart shrink even further with pure joy. But utter disappointment set in when I discovered that this premise is established in the first two ages and resolved by the third (he felt guilty and came back).It's possible there was good mystery in here, but I'm not suffering through 200 pages of 8pt font to find out.

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    Rest You Merry - Charlotte MacLeod

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