It's the night before Christmas as I write this review.The season is merry and I should be too.

Yet despite best intentions and goodwill to all men, I couldn't bring myself to listen to this book again.

The story is slow and the characters are bland. I don't care whodunnit or how they are found.

Two hours of listening to lengthy discourse on marbles and murder and wrongly locked doors, with no tension and no action are more than enough. I'm setting it aside to read other stuff.

Series: Peter Shandy #1

Professor Shandy goes away for a few days over Christmas after staging a ghastly Christmas light display at his house in order to get back at everyone nagging at him for not participating in the illumination display only to find a dead body in his house on his return. The characters were amusing but overall I found them to be just a bit much so I didn't like this as much as the other mystery I read by Charlotte MacLeod.

The book does give me a chance to play a Holiday Book Joker card for square 13 for Christmas, however.

Series: Madoc Rhys #1

This book is first in a series that I knew nothing about going into. It’s a cozy mystery wherein an old lady is poisoned by a poorly prepared batch of canned string beans. So dastardly! Janet, her neighbour, harbours suspicions about the circumstances and tries to call in the RCMP (i.e. Madoc).

The setting is a small town in New Brunswick, and I think MacLeod did a good job at portraying the kind of petty viciousness that can fester under the surface in a small community (feuds etc). The dialogue was reasonably snappy too. Overall it was a short and fun read although it’s a good idea to keep in mind that it was published in 1980 and some of the social circumstances definitely speak of that time in a small town. I may look up the next in the series the next time I feel in the mood for a cute cozy mystery that isn’t totally lame. Plus it gets points for being Canadian.

I read this for my first roll in booklikes-opoly, square #8 “Read a book that is tagged mystery” although I can substitute it for my second square (I rolled doubles) #17 “Read a book that is tagged cozy mystery” if anyone disagrees with my book choice for that square.

Since the print copies that I’ve seen have page counts in the 180s, I’m going to give myself $2 for finishing a book in the 101-200 page range (Kobo says 209, but the text finished by page 202/206 [my ereader count] or so and the few pages at the beginning probably make it under 200 anyway).

This brings my bank total to $22.

"At least we might as well wait an’ hear what the doctor has to say.”

Janet sniffed. “That old dodo? If he’s still able to talk, he’ll tell you whatever he thinks you want to hear. The only thing he ever knew how to treat was hypochondria. Couldn’t you find a doctor who’s halfway competent? Isn’t there a provincial coroner or somebody?"

 This book is kind of fun, actually.

Heh. It's not very often that you find a cozy mystery book referencing the NDP (Canadian Federal/Provincial political party).

Just had to share the "you know it's Canadian when..." moment.

The book takes place in a small town in New Brunswick, by the way.