#6 in the Sarah Keeling series: Sarah's Aunt Emma's theater troupe is doing The Sorcerer, as Emma has always hankered to play Lady Sangazure. Perhaps she made a bad choice, though, by casting a well-connected con man in the title role. It's no mere evil spell that leaves Charlie Daventer dead on his bathroom floor. But the show must go on. Cousin Frederick is hurled into the breach. Old Fred really can't tolerate the general assumption that his friend Charlie died by accident. He convinces Sarah that a murder has been committed. Sarah's husband, Max the detective, is off in Finland, so she tackles the case herself. Clues aren't hard to find. Sarah sorts them out, only to learn when the curtain falls that the show is far from over....
Typical Macleod sly humor. This Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn mystery has very little of Max, since he is off in Europe someplace. Sarah, helping Aunt Emma's theatre troupe stage a Gilbert & Sullivan opera, is forced to investigate the mysterious murder of a cast member all by herself. Of course, we get tied up in various doings of the Kelling clan, some typically wonderfully weird cast members, and sundry others. A valuable family portrait gets stolen, and that complicates matters more. I like the Peter Shandy series better, but Macleod is always worth the reading.
Sarah Kelling (as was) has to solve this one without the help of her art detective husband who is overseas on another painting chase. All of the usual goofy Kellings are there and MacLeod is never less than entertaining even when writing about murder.
