Why Charlotte MacLeod’s Rest You Merry Is the Cozy Christmas Mystery I Re-Read Every December.

 

There are a handful of books that, for me, officially kick off the Christmas season. Mistletoe, carols, and twinkly lights are lovely, but nothing says “it’s December” quite like curling up with Charlotte MacLeod’s Rest You Merry—the hilarious, clever, and surprisingly heartwarming first book in her beloved Professor Peter Shandy series, that ultimately ran ten novels. It started as a short story, but was so popular that MacLeod was encouraged to turn it into a novel, wherein the short story became the opening chapter.

 Picture this: Balaclava Agricultural College in rural Massachusetts is in full holiday frenzy. Every December the campus transforms into the “Balaclava Grand Illumination,” a garish, money-spinning tourist spectacle that would make Clark Griswold blush. Peter Shandy — propagator of the world's most renowned rutabaga — a mild-mannered, tenured horticulture professor who just wants a quiet Christmas with a glass of good sherry and zero blinking reindeer, finally snaps. In a glorious act of passive-aggressive rebellion, he hires a decorating company to smother his historic faculty house in the tackiest, most over-the-top light display imaginable… then promptly boards a cruise ship to escape the fallout.

Fate, of course, has other plans. The ship breaks down, Shandy returns early, and he walks into his living room to find the college’s nosiest librarian dead beneath his mechanized Santa display—apparently killed while trying to sabotage his decorations. The police call it a tragic accident. Peter Shandy, being a detail-obsessed academic with a Poirot-level intolerance for loose ends, smells murder. And that, dear reader, is how a grumpy agronomy professor becomes one of the most endearing amateur sleuths in cozy history.

What makes Rest You Merry so irresistible, even 45 years later, is how perfectly it captures the classic cozy formula while feeling completely fresh. The small New England college town functions exactly like a traditional English village: everyone knows everyone, grudges go back decades, and secrets hide behind every poinsettia. MacLeod populates this world with larger-than-life characters—the fearsome President’s wife, the ancient endowment-obsessed benefactress, the perpetually starving graduate students—who deliver some of the wittiest, snappiest dialogue I’ve ever read in a mystery. Seriously, the banter is champagne-bubble sharp.

 Shandy himself is a delight: prim, precise, secretly sentimental, and armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of turnips and ornamental grasses that somehow proves essential to solving crime. By the end of the book he’s acquired a leading lady (the marvelous Helen Marsh) who becomes his perfect foil in the nine sequels. Yes, I’ve read them all—multiple times—and yes, I’m a die-hard Anglophile cozy reader who rarely strays from British settings. The fact that a Massachusetts farming college stole my heart says everything.

If you love classic Golden Age vibes (think Agatha Christie with better one-liners and a New England winter backdrop), this is your book. It’s funny without ever being cute, clever without being smug, and genuinely Christmassy without drowning in sentiment. The audiobook, narrated by wonderful John McLain, is an absolute treat—perfect for wrapping presents or baking cookies.

So light the fire, pour the eggnog, and let Peter Shandy remind you that even the grumpiest heart can be won over by murder, mistletoe, and a truly outrageous lawn display.

Rating: 5 twinkling reindeer out of 5

 You can (and you MUST!) get a copy here.

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