The Gladstone Bag: A Sarah Kelling Mystery

As always, MacLeod serves up unalloyed pleasure in recounting the exploits of an eccentric Boston Brahmin family, this time starring Emma Kelling (aunt to amateur detective Sarah). The glamorous, aging but vigorous widow leaps into nets at a firemen's benefit, performs in operettas and now takes on a new role--housekeeper for a group of aspiring artists and writers living on an island retreat belonging to one of her friends. Taking a bag of stage jewelry to repair, Emma arrives on isolated Picapuk Island off Maine to meet rude Everard Wont, writer; suave Count Alexei Radunov, poet; Alding Fath, psychic; Joris Groot and Lisbet Quainley, illustrators. They plan to find and write about pirate treasure supposedly buried on Picapuk, and Emma's baubles cause some confusion. But the genuine, incredibly valuable diamond necklace she finds in the bag incites murder. Somebody on the island kills a stranger who has swum ashore; dopes the psychic and hits Emma and several guests on their heads. Recovering her senses, the heroine phones for advice to her niece Sarah and husband Max Bittersohn, who send the help she needs to nab the villains. (Feb.)