Years and years ago, I picked up one of the Grub and Stakers books, House a Haunt because of the quirky name and the allusion to a ghost story. I remember having to make myself finish it (I did that back then), but I couldn't remember why; it must have held some attractions because when I saw several for sale in the book room at Bouchercon, I bought them.

Now I remember why I had to make myself finish. But I don't know that it's because the books are bad, or if, as I suspect, it's because they're meant to be a type of satire/humor that I'm not primed for. Alisa Craig is, after all, Charlotte Macleod, an author with more than a few awards and lifetime achievement honors under her belt.

I've never read (that I can remember) anything else by Macleod, but these are written with tongue so firmly in cheek, it's silly. The characters are over-the-top in a grandiose fashion. A random opening of the book brings this example of the narrative style:

"I should hope so, egad," Arethusa replied. "I shall sit mumchance at the sideboard, like the twenty-ninth of February."

or

"I have speculated, Dittany. I have also remarked the absence of smudges, stains, or deposits of bird droppings on his garments despite the fact that yon aforementioned ledges have visibly served as roosting places for our feathered friends for, lo, these many decades. I have concluded that it would have taken a degree of ingenuity, agility, and persistence most remarkable in an elderly man of sedentary habit and scholarly inclination for Mr. Fairfield to have accomplished such a feat."
Most of that painful verbosity comes from two characters, a Regency Romance author, played to the hilt of stereotype in that way that usually the Brits do better than anyone, and the Sergeant, a Scotsman. Another character is a famous author of westerns and he is also played to the hilt of stereotype.

And it is hilarious - the book - on the whole, and the mystery was really clever. But it was often a slog getting through all that florid writing. If this book doesn't hold the record for the most occurrences of "forsooth" it must surely be a contender. The thing is, there's genius here; if Monty Python wrote a cozy, it surely would look a lot like this. ( )

The grub-and-stakers quilt a bee by Alisa Craig
Mystery surrounds the new museum. Mr. Fairfield has passed away and others wonder if
it is the patterns on the quilt that leads to his death.
List of characters at the beginning of the book. Clues lead the quilters and others to ask more questions for the investigators.
Liked hearing of the quilts and the block making. Very confusing with all the characters as they are each working on different sections of renovating the museum.
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device). ( )

In the second Grub-and-Staker mystery the club has inherited the large old Victorian house that belonged to the murder victim in the first book. It's to be turned into a museum named for his late wife.

The club makes a start on the museum, including hiring a curator. Mr. Fairfield is fine. Mrs. Fairfield is another matter. Guess which one gets murdered? The Grub-and-Stakers are too nice to throw a new widow out on sidewalk even if she is a dreadful pest. What will they do with her? Who killed her husband?

The quilt in the title comes from an exquisite one found in the attic. Dittany and Arethusa Monk are examining it when Osbert (Dittany's husband and Arethusa's nephew) is the one to notice something strange about the design. What could it mean?

Someone tries to burgle the Monks' houses. Ethel-the-dog-who-could-pass-for-a-bear is too lovesick to be a good watchdog. They can't find anything missing. Poor Osbert is quite unhappy about what happened to the manuscript for his latest Western.

Expect the usual witty dialogue and strange happenings one gets in a Charlotte MacLeod mystery even under her pen name. The mystery of the quilt is a good one. I'm sure Nancy Drew would have been thrilled to solve it.

Lobelia Falls facts for fellow fans who share my trouble remembering from which book they come:

Chapter 1:

1. Section A, Clause 3 of the bylaws of the Grub-and-Stake Gardening and Roving Club of Lobelia Falls, Ontario states that the club 'shall initiate and carry out projects for the general education and beautification of our community.

There's a list of the first items offered for donation to the Aralia Polyphema Architrave Musdeum.

Chapter 2:

The Western Lex Laramie's is currently writing does indeed have the kind of heroine he discussed in the first book.

Mr. Fairfield is the cousin of an uncle of Dot Coskoff's sister's brother-in-law

The only bathroom in the museum was built in an old woodshed off the back entry.

The museum had a birthing room when it was just the Architrave house.

Here's where the author mentioned what Mr. Fairfield couldn't have done to his previous museum's cat.

The hardware store has a Mr. Peavy who has four stalwart sons with four stalwart girlfriends.

Samantha Burberry's mother-in-law donated a silk piano scarf.

Dittany has her great-grandmother's bridal quilt at home. It's made of embroidered pieces of her great-grandmother's girl friends' best Sunday go-to-meeting gowns featherboned into a crazy quilt.

Osbert's description of Dittany's eyes, made during their honeymoon, is mentioned.

Chapter 3:

1. Arethusa complains about Osbert & Dittany's canoodling.

2. Arethusa has a Spanish shawl.

3. Osbert has a buckskin vest with Indian beadwork.

4. Osbert gives his opinion on Lady Ermintrude's sex appeal to Arethusa.

5. People in Lobelia Falls eat their 3 meals at pretty much the same time because so many of them are on so many different committees.

6. Sergeant MacVicar enjoys eating grossel fool.

7. The MacVicars have grandchildren.

8. The doctor attending Mrs. Fairfield is named Somervell.

Chapter 4:

1. Osbert wanted to play Tarzan (and with what).

2. Arethusa's arch-rival's name is Lydia E. Twinkham, who is 83 years old and lives in a nursing home at Lesser Gimbling-in-the-Wabe. [OK, Mrs. MacLeod must have liked 'Jabberwocky'. Was the arch-rival named for Lydia E. Pinkham, the 19th century brewer of an herbal rememdy for 'female complaints'?]

Chapter 5:

1. There are seven Fawcett brothers. Cedric is nick-named 'Cold-Water'. Harold, the second eldest, is the one nicknamed 'Hot-Water'.

2. It was Male Archers' practice night when the murder was first being investigated.

3. Dittany is privately tutoring Osbert to be an archer.

4. Sergeant MacVicar's father had served in the Nova Scotia Highlanders and knew a song about shooting arrows before it gets too dark.

5. Dave Munson often strikes too soon when fishing.

6. Dave's heart has been temporarily broken by a redhead from Burketon Station.

Chapter 6:

1. Sergeant MacVicar has blue eyes.

2. Cedric Fawcett drinks Labatt's beer.

3. Andy McNasty's shiny red cheeks look as if he's sucking jawbreakers.

4. Sergeant MacVicar believes that praise to the face is an open disgrace.

5. Mrs. MacVicar described her husband's expression as a 'Deacon Jeramiah face'.

Chapter 7:

1. Reverend Pennyfeather will be officiating at the funeral.

2. Mr. Fairfield's nephew lives in Duluth.

3. Dittany thinks the cowlick behind Osbert's left ear is adorable.

Chapter 9:

1. Here is where Mrs.Fairfield explains what Frederick did to her husband when they were boys.

2. Arethusa explains why she knows the Battenburg tablecloth she's donating was made in 1897.

Chapter 12:

There are further developments in Ethel's love for a woodchuck

Chapter 13:

1. Osbert's first novel was Red Tails in the Sunset: A Backward Look at the Last Roundup of the Longhorns. He bought a used pickup truck with the advance.

2. The Binkles gave Osbert and Dittany Ethel's doghouse for a wedding present. The doghouse has stained glass windows and wall-to-wall carpeting.

3. Gramp Henbit liked the song about paddling your own canoe.

Chapter 14:

1. Dittany was four years old when Gram Henbit bought her a child-sized broom and she learned how to sweep a porch.

Chapter 15:

Ditty has her Gram's seed pearl broach. Her mother and stepfather, Bert, gave her a silver squash blossom necklace and Osbert a concho belt.

Chapter 17:

1. Arethusa's house is decorated in the Regency style. Her glass-topped dining room table is held up by gilded crocodiles.

2. Arethusa has a photo of Osbert in a cowboy suit taken when he was a child.

3. Miss Jane Fuzzywuzzy's Yarnery in Scottsbeck is mentioned.

Chapter 18:

1. Osbert wanted a pony when he was little, but his parents lived in a high-rise apartment in downtown Toronto.

2. Osbert's father is an oil executive and blames Arethusa for his younger son becoming Lex Laramie.

3. Arethusa is expecting the galley proofs for Sir Percy Foils Again .

4. Osbert tells Arethusa where she sneaks her plots out of.

Chapter 19:

Dittany's mother and Bert went to a sceance once. They compared the noise to New Year's Eve at the Owls' Club.

Chapter 20:

One of Arethusa's books is titled Vilest Villainy in Velvet. Another is Saving a Swine.

Chapter 21:

Dittany still keeps the bookcase Gramp Henbit made for her in the small bedroom that used to be hers until she got married. Three of the books in it are Alice in Wonderland, a Girl Guides manual, and The Wizard of Oz.

Chapter 23:

Arethusa keeps a bottle of Romaunt de la Rose perfume on her bedroom dresser.

Peter Rauch is the artist for the cover that shows a needle thrust into the chest of a figure like a crime scene chalk outline that has been stitched in bright red thread.

The first hardcover edition has the Crime Club logo (a stylized man with a gun) above the words 'Crime Club' on the spine where the publisher's name usually appears. Judging from my other MacLeod hardcovers, if your dustjacketless book has 'Doubleday' instead of the Crime Club logo, you have a book club edition. ( )

The Grub-and-Stakers, a gardening club in small town Ontario, receive a bequest--a house full of stuff, some worthless and some quite nice--to run as a museum. The Aralia Polyphema Architrave Museum, to be exact. But before they can get up and running, someone murders their new curator by pushing him off the roof.

Dittany Henbit Monk and her husband, who writes westerns under a pen name, help the local police solve the murder. But first she has to solve an important clue--the bride quilt, embroidered with little multi-colored bees.

I really liked this mystery. It is full of eccentric characters and a fun plot, even a little hint of romance. If you like Mary Daheim's bed and breakfast series, you'd probably like this. ( )