Customer Reviews

Rest You Merry

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have alsways enjoyed spoofs obout Christmas, and this one had me laughing so hard that I cried. Prof. Peter Shandy did what I always wanted to do about December 23rd, when the pressures of this "giving season" are really getting to me. It is also a really good mystery with a plot, cleverly drawn characters and a satisfactor ending. I recommend it highly (especially in the third week of December).

If you like eccentric, crazy characters, and good mystery, this is a great book!

I love Rest You Merry and I was thrilled to see a hardcover edition advertised, but this edition is awful. It is actually a paperback, not a hardcover edition. Probably a reprint of a hardcover without resetting the text for a paperback sized book. The font size is tiny, like foot notes and hard to read. While a normal paperback has 32-35 rows of text, this has 44 in the same size book! I hope there will be a new edition with a better layout at some point in the future. This is a gloriously funny book worth re-reading for the pleasure of escaping to Balaclava with its eccentric inhabitants and the reindeer on Peter Shandy's roof! Five points for the book, one point for the edition.

Welcome to Balaclava Agricultural College, the setting of one of the funniest mystery series in existence. REST YOU MERRY is the debut appearance of Professor Peter Shandy and all of his colleagues who will tickle your funny bone until you've collected them all. Then read them twice and return for more.
Best medicine for the holiday hassle is an annual dose of Peter when he finally gives in and decorates for the season, complete with "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth," turns the sound up full blast and takes an ocean voyage. Peter is ship wrecked and returns home to find a body in his living room, irritate neighbors and mayhem.
I have no idea how many times I've seen THE NUTCRACKER, or A CHRISTMAS CAROL, but REST YE MERRY will always cleanse the palate.
Nash Black, author of TRAVELERS and SINS OF THE FATHERS.

Coming home to find that your neighbor has died under one of your tacky yuletide decorations -- that's got to be the worst Christmas surprise ever.

Unfortunately it's just the beginning of a very unpleasant holiday season for Peter Shandy, with murder popping up all over the place in a pleasant little agricultural college. Charlotte MacLeod adds a touch of gentle, humorous screwball to a solidly-written whodunnit in "Rest You Merry," and deftly creates a lovable cast of characters that are just eccentric enough without being weird.

After years of being harassed by his best friend's busybody wife Jemima Ames, Peter Shandy decides to take part in the Grand Illumination... by having the biggest, loudest, tackiest Christmas display ever. Unfortunately when he gets home, he finds Jemima dead on his living room floor, apparently having fallen while trying to de-decorate his house. But a few clues -- including a fried marble -- just don't seem to add up.

So Peter starts snooping for who would have loathed Jemima enough to kill her -- sure, she was intensely annoying to everyone around him, but not somebody you would actually kill.During this time, a distant relative of the newly widowed Timothy Ames shows up: the ladylike librarian Helen, who assists Peter in his investigation. Unfortunately, the Vikingesque head of the college is not too thrilled about Peter insisting that this is murder.... until another corpse shows up, and this one was definitely murdered.

I have to admit, most cozy mysteries don't take place on the campus of an agricultural campus, and most detectives aren't middle-aged professors best known for breeding a superturnip. But that oddness just adds to the charm of "Rest You Merry" -- Charlotte MacLeod's first Peter Shandy mystery is a pleasantly warm, slightly screwball murder mystery with lots of clues and significant items sprinkled through the story. Marbles, books, knitted masks, sleds and a plastic Santa all take part in the story.

Fortunately, MacLeod is extremely good at juggling all the various subplots, and exploring all the twisted personal politics of various campus-dwelling professors. But there's also an undercurrent of deliciously weird humor that never becomes too odd, both in the dialogue ("Shandy just told me to go to hell." "Can you not go quietly? You'll frighten our guests") and the action (Shandy arranging the most horrendous yuletide display EVER, complete with music and purple lights).

Peter makes a delightfully laid-back sleuth: he's a comfortable middle-aged man who likes to count things, and refuses to let anyone shove him around (no matter how important, imposing or obnoxious they are). He's also a perfect match for the Helen, and their low-key love story is a sweet diversion from all the death -- they both love counting things, they're intelligent and literate, and they have weird conversations about nailing hides to chapels.

And MacLeod sprinkles Balaclava College with plenty of odd, eccentric and rather plausible characters -- lusty amazonian students, local busybodies, deaf professors, elderly ex-socialites, a promiscuous security chief, and especially Thorkjeld Svenson and his wife Sieglinde, an imposing pair who look like a mighty Viking king and a serene Valkyrie.

"Rest You Merry" is the sort of Christmas story you'd expect from Charlotte MacLeod -- not only does it have a perplexing mystery, but a gently sly sense of humor and a wonderfully weird cast.

A delightful read. Funny if you've given up "keeping up" with the neighbors and their Christmas decoration.