Rest You Merry was published far after the “Golden Age” period, and if I hadn’t read it as part of a Golden Age challenge, I would just call it a cosy murder mystery. But it’s a story that fits in well with the Golden Age, with its small cast of characters, its small town setting and its clever amateur detective reluctantly forced by circumstances to investigate the suspicious death of woman when he finds her dead in his house.

The setting for this story is Balaclava Agricultural College, a college in a small town somewhere in rural New England. It has an annual tradition: they put on an elaborate Christmas light festival and attempt to fleece as many tourists as they can to raise funds for college scholarships. This tradition is taken very seriously by the residents of Balaclava Crescent, where Peter Shandy is the only homeowner who does not take part in the jollification. This year, fed up with being badgered yet again to decorate his house, he snaps. He calls in some expert help and gets his house fully bedecked with a garish light and sound show, programmed to repeat continuously.

The following light and musical display from YouTube captures how I imagine the ostentatious display Peter Shandy commissions:

I doubt if he managed this level of effect in 1978, but from the descriptions in the book, he came close. With full light and sound torture installed, he locks access to the controls and leaves town for a cruise Three days later, on Christmas Day when the boat needs to put ashore for a minor repair, our Scrooge suddenly realises how awful he has been to his neighbours and decides to return home and face the consequences. He arrives home at dawn on Boxing Day to find his house dark and silent. Obviously, his locks weren’t enough to stop his neighbours from turning off the torment. He enters his house and finds the dead body of a neighbour, with appearances suggesting that she slipped while removing a flashing Santa head, hit her own head, and died.

Initially, he feels guilt at accidentally causing the death of a friend’s wife, even if he didn’t particularly like the woman. But after looking around, he notices a few odd things. The local police are happy to declare the death accidental and move on, reluctant to upset the head of the College who they feel will want the death handled quietly to avoid distressing the Christmas tourists. But Shandy, who has an independent source of income as well as tenure, is not afraid to share his belief with the College head, President Thorkjeld Svenson, that the woman was murdered. Svenson orders Shandy to find the murderer without driving away any of the tourists.

Shandy is a great character. He’s a lot smarter than many of the amateur detectives who turn up in cosy murder mysteries, and is much sharper on this case than the local police and much more focussed. He is decidedly eccentric and seems happy in his routine life, and is funny when he abruptly falls for a new woman in town and tries to court her while also continuing his investigations.

MacLeod captures the atmosphere of a small community perfectly, where everyone knows each other but still manage to keep secrets. The book is rather dated though. For example, when people can’t be found, all anyone can do is ask around if anyone has seen them, rather than just call them on a mobile phone. Another rather dated aspect is the bored wives of the professors, all seemingly spending their time drinking cocktails or engaging in casual affairs with any available man. It seems in this community that only the husbands work. The only women mentioned as working in the faculty are unmarried.

Despite Shandy’s efforts, it takes him most of the book to realise the motive for the murder. I was a bit quicker and realised well before he did that an uncatalogued collection of old books donated to the College was going to be important, as the murdered woman had appointed herself in charge of the collection. I also had an idea about how the murder was carried out and had it mostly figured out. I didn’t pick all the details though, so I still got a surprise at who was involved at the end.

This was a very cosy read, with plenty of humour and no overtly bloody descriptions of murder. I enjoyed reading it in the lead up to Christmas, finding it very light and restful. I’d describe it as a comfort read, with nothing much in it to challenge the mind. It’s just what is needed at what can be a hectic time of the year.