Exit the Milkman

Kidnapping and murder, no strangers to Balaclava Agricultural College, expose doughty professor Peter Shandy to the lifestyle of the rich, if not famous. Shandy, last seen in Something in the Water, is desultorily investigating the disappearance of his neighbor James Feldster, head of the dairy management department, when the missing man's awful wife, Mirelle, is discovered dead and covered with blood. Mystery writer Catriona McBogle, visiting the Shandys during a spell of writer's block, accidentally finds the missing man unconscious in a limousine at the bottom of a ravine off a deserted road. For complicated reasons, she keeps his whereabouts mostly secret. That the henpecked dairy professor is heir to a major dairy dynasty and that his late wife is rumored to have bestowed her affections freely around Balaclava are issues that fearsome college President Thorkjeld Svenson wants kept out of the papers. Shandy takes the recovered but reluctant Feldster to the family manse to take charge of the family fortune and dispossess his nephew, Florian, as head of the family. In the 10th Shandy tale, MacLeod again demonstrates her skill and with incomparable whimsy makes her bucolic puzzles great fun. Mystery Guild selection. (Aug.)