The Withdrawing Room : A Sarah Kelling & Max Bittersohn Mystery

by Charlotte MacLeod

Paperback, 2002

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Publication

I Books (2002), Mass Market Paperback, 192 pages

Description

Death pays a visit to Sarah Kelling's Boston boardinghouse in this cozy mystery from the bestselling author of the Peter Shandy series. Though the inheritance from her dearly departed Alexander was meant to set Sarah Kelling up for life, it vanishes quickly in the face of hounding from charitable organizations and the IRS. Facing the loss of her stately Back Bay brownstone, Sarah opens her home to lodgers - deciding she prefers a boardinghouse to the poorhouse. Soon she is cooking meals and serving tea for a cast of quirky residents, a cozy little family that would be quite happy were it not for the unpleasant presence of a certain Barnwell Augustus Quiffen - a man so rude that no one really minds when he is squashed beneath a subway car. Sarah replaces her lost boarder quickly, and the family dynamic is restored. But when another lodger dies suddenly, the boardinghouse appears to be cursed. Now it will take more than a glass of sherry to soothe Sarah's panicked residents, and she must turn to detective Max Bittersohn for help before her boarders bolt.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member drruth

The second and best in the Sarah Kelling series of mysteries, assuming your focus is on the characters not the mystery. Macleod's books are about the recurring characters, the setting and the humor, they are not about the puzzle.

4 more

LibraryThing member cindysprocket

This is my first Charlotte MaCleod. Not too big on the mystery but, I really enjoyed the different characters. The plot being taken place among the Boston aristocrat it was hard to figure out when this was supposed to be taken place. Not that it really mattered.

LibraryThing member librisissimo

Substance: Entertaining cast and dialogue, but there is absolutely no preparation for the solution.
Style: Fun to read.

LibraryThing member jetangen4571

cozy-mystery, reread

After finding out that she is deep in debt following the murders of her beloved older husband and detestable mother in law, young Mrs Kelling determines to turn the contested house into a higher class boarding house with her being both landlady and cook. Good thing she was used

to pinchpenny ways even when everyone believed that her family was wealthy! Applicants were many, but she thought she did well until she not only had two awful tenants in a row, but each of them got murdered. Nicely done and with plenty of humor. First published in 1980, there are landlines and other things unusual today.

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LibraryThing member catseyegreen

Sarah Kelling, heir to a home that is costing her a lot opens a boarding house. When two of her tenants die she is involved in a murder plot.

re-read 12/26/2023

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