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EXIT THE MILKMAN, by Charlotte Macleod.
Cover copy: Charlotte MacLeon possesses the "gift of farce," says the HOUSTON POST. In her Professor Peter Shandy mystery series she delivers it with "generous dollops of...warmth, with and whimsy" (SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY EXAMINER & CHRONICLE). Now her newest book puts horticultural professor Peter Shandy, America's homegrown Hercule Poirot, on the trail of a missing bovine expert at Balaclava Agricultural College. And Shandy is sure to step into a heap of, well, trouble, during his tenth and most baffling case yet...
Professor Jim Feldster will do anything for his cows and his students of dairy management...and anything to avoid an evening at home with his bossy, house-proud wife, Mirelle. A member of every lodge in the county, he's out of the house most evenings, and on this particular night, escaping to a meeting of the Scarlet Runners. On the way, he bumps into a neighbor, Peter Shandy, who is out strolling with his cat, Jane Austen. Professor Feldster never arrives at his meeting.
Meanwhile, at precisely 2:47 A.M., a distraught Mirelle arrives at the Shandy household pounding at the front door and accusing the Shandys of harboring her wayward spouse. Before he knows it, Peter and his librarian wife, Helen, are knee-deep in another mystery.
Where is Professor Feldster? What dark secrets could possibly be lurking behind his life of grain supplements and electric milking machines? Peter and Helen's good friend, mystery writer Catriona McBogle, is serendipitously plunged into the case, and all three begin to plough through what appears to be a herd of lies. Soon Peter discovers that Jim Feldster, assuming he is not dead already, is in terrible danger. Mirelle faces perils as well - and they're a lot more serious than someone tracking mud on her white carpet.
A passion for cows is a fine thing, but when investigating criminal motives, Professor Shandy knows to look for more fundamental impulses, such as love, green and revenge. In EXIT THE MILKMAN, he does it with elan and tongue-in-cheek, as Charlotte MacLeod once again pens a mystery filled with delicious wit, good to the last satiric bite.
Gender of detective: male. Mostly. With lots of help from a woman.
The woman in question is the mystery writer Catriona. (Who coincidentally has the same initials as the author, gets along with everybody, has the world's worst sense of direction which still gets her to where she needs to be, in a cosmic sense...) She literally stumbles across not only the reason why Jim was vanished, but also Jim himself. She avoids Mary Sue-dom by the narrowest of margins, mostly the fact that the book isn't about her, and she seems gracefully aware of that.
The Peter Shandy parts, on the other hand...the style is very reminiscent of THE CAT WHO..., except this book actually remembers it's a mystery. It's still cutesy as hell, most notably with its footnoting of references to previos events with the title of the book in which said even occured. But it keeps the focus on the mystery and solving it, not on the Peter Shandy is Cuter Than You Show.
One final interesting element: Jim lives. Mirelle winds up dead, rather messily so. Neither of them are exactly saints. The cynical part of me wonders why the author chose to kill her off, rather than, say, just have her attacked. I suppose if she lived, it wouldn't be as much of a happy ending for Jim... [/cynical]
Cover copy: Charlotte MacLeon possesses the "gift of farce," says the HOUSTON POST. In her Professor Peter Shandy mystery series she delivers it with "generous dollops of...warmth, with and whimsy" (SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY EXAMINER & CHRONICLE). Now her newest book puts horticultural professor Peter Shandy, America's homegrown Hercule Poirot, on the trail of a missing bovine expert at Balaclava Agricultural College. And Shandy is sure to step into a heap of, well, trouble, during his tenth and most baffling case yet...
Professor Jim Feldster will do anything for his cows and his students of dairy management...and anything to avoid an evening at home with his bossy, house-proud wife, Mirelle. A member of every lodge in the county, he's out of the house most evenings, and on this particular night, escaping to a meeting of the Scarlet Runners. On the way, he bumps into a neighbor, Peter Shandy, who is out strolling with his cat, Jane Austen. Professor Feldster never arrives at his meeting.
Meanwhile, at precisely 2:47 A.M., a distraught Mirelle arrives at the Shandy household pounding at the front door and accusing the Shandys of harboring her wayward spouse. Before he knows it, Peter and his librarian wife, Helen, are knee-deep in another mystery.
Where is Professor Feldster? What dark secrets could possibly be lurking behind his life of grain supplements and electric milking machines? Peter and Helen's good friend, mystery writer Catriona McBogle, is serendipitously plunged into the case, and all three begin to plough through what appears to be a herd of lies. Soon Peter discovers that Jim Feldster, assuming he is not dead already, is in terrible danger. Mirelle faces perils as well - and they're a lot more serious than someone tracking mud on her white carpet.
A passion for cows is a fine thing, but when investigating criminal motives, Professor Shandy knows to look for more fundamental impulses, such as love, green and revenge. In EXIT THE MILKMAN, he does it with elan and tongue-in-cheek, as Charlotte MacLeod once again pens a mystery filled with delicious wit, good to the last satiric bite.
Gender of detective: male. Mostly. With lots of help from a woman.
The woman in question is the mystery writer Catriona. (Who coincidentally has the same initials as the author, gets along with everybody, has the world's worst sense of direction which still gets her to where she needs to be, in a cosmic sense...) She literally stumbles across not only the reason why Jim was vanished, but also Jim himself. She avoids Mary Sue-dom by the narrowest of margins, mostly the fact that the book isn't about her, and she seems gracefully aware of that.
The Peter Shandy parts, on the other hand...the style is very reminiscent of THE CAT WHO..., except this book actually remembers it's a mystery. It's still cutesy as hell, most notably with its footnoting of references to previos events with the title of the book in which said even occured. But it keeps the focus on the mystery and solving it, not on the Peter Shandy is Cuter Than You Show.
One final interesting element: Jim lives. Mirelle winds up dead, rather messily so. Neither of them are exactly saints. The cynical part of me wonders why the author chose to kill her off, rather than, say, just have her attacked. I suppose if she lived, it wouldn't be as much of a happy ending for Jim... [/cynical]