I have read and reread this witty, charming Charlotte MacLeod mystery countless times, which is why I reread it for the Book For All Seasons Desert Island challenge. There was some fascinating discussion about what a desert island read meant to different people - I took it as the no return, able to reread a book repeatedly to entertain and keep up one’s spirits. I know for a fact this author works for me - I just had to pick one of her books.
That was the tough part, because I also love her Professor Peter Shandy series, and reread the first, loosely Christmas- themed novel yearly; inevitably, one book leads to the next! Lovely way to round out the year, especially the last several years, with serious health issues for me and loved ones.
This book is the second in MacLeod’s second series, featuring well-born Boston Widow Sarah Kelling and art historian Max Bittersohn. I loved the first novel, also, but in that book Sarah is more the harassed, overworked wife to a kind but MUCH older, weaker man (always thought it was a bit creepy, since he was much older, married her young, and they were cousins of a sort), and in this novel she’s a widow coming into her own.
Sarah is broke and trying to hang on to her desirable Beacon Hill home; she’s no snob but knows how to play Lady of the House (while doing the cooking and some cleaning as needed), and knows boarders will pay for the address. With the hilarious, street-wise help of Mariposa, the maid, and Charles, the “resting” actor/factory worker/butler, Sarah is renting out rooms to “the right kind” of people (rich enough to pay the steep rents suggested by Sarah’s hilarious and irreverent Uncle Jem).
Her best room, the Withdrawing Room, goes to a friend of an old family friend, Augustus Barnwell Quiffen, a cantankerous old crackpot who soon ends up under a subway train; did he fall or was he pushed? Soon after, another old family friend takes over the empty room and meets a violent end - who’s stalking Sarah’s renters?
Max Bittersohn is renting the basement room, sharing a bathroom with Mariposa and Charles, and keeping an eye on Sarah, and does much of the detecting in this case; we only learn about his actions later at the “big reveal” of the case at the end. Sarah does a lot of interior monologue in the last half of the book, trying to decide who’s targeting her tenants. In later books, I know Sarah and Max will work together, which is fun to anticipate; at this point, Sarah is just trying to keep a roof above her head and keep up a respectable front for her boarders, while mourning the loss of her husband, and fighting a growing attraction to the handsome Max.
I love MacLeod’s wit and literate mysteries; like Elizabeth Peters’ beloved Amelia Peabody series, I’m entertained, amused, and often learn something. What else could you ask for? That is why this book would be a favorite desert island read for me.