Helen is kidnapped (temporarily) when she and her husband Peter are shopping and the kidnappers come in to rob the place. Luckily, she is soon found and brought back no worse for wear. Meantime, the agricultural college’s (where both Peter and Helen work) pregnant pig is also kidnapped. And the local farrier turns up murdered. What happened here? Was it all the same person, or are these unrelated crimes?

This was ok. I liked the first in the series better. This was pretty slow-moving. Some of the terminology felt… pretentious? (Trying to come up with a good word.) Maybe it was supposed to be, since there are so many academics in the book? I did lose interest periodically, so I missed how they figured out “who dun it”, though at least I did catch the “who”. I will read the next book in the series before deciding if I want to continue further. ( )

I can't take this book very seriously but as a ridiculous mystery with old fashioned ideas (published way back in 1979), I had some fun with it. The setting is an agricultural college and despite supposedly all being a lot of farmers, the professors end up sounding rather fusty. This one has a stolen pig, a murder that may or may not have been an unintended by-product of the pig-napping, and a gold and silver heist, that may or may not tie together (telling you would mean spoilers :) ). ( )

I have always enjoyed the Peter Shandy mysteries with their sense of comedy and the wonderfully overblown characters. They make for an easy and entertaining read, and this one, involving kidnapping, murder, theft, and general shenanigans at the Balaclava Agricultural College, is no exception.

I would love to buy them all for Kindle and replace my old paper editions, but sadly this edition by Open Road is way, way over-priced, especially (to judge by this particular title) in view of the fact that they do not seem to bother with proofreaders. This has been produced from OCR by someone who does not understand that OCR gets it wrong sometimes . There is missing punctuation, wrong punctuation, wrong words, and even wrong names. Not good enough.

I bought this on offer for less than a pound, but I won’t be buying any more from Open Road unless they bring their prices down and do their job properly. ( )

In this book, the local farrier is murdered among various strange happenings in and around the college - the kidnapping of a prize pig, the horseshoes on the stable doors are turned upside-down, the college waggon is vandalised and the vault at the local gold- and silver-smith is emptied. Various dramatics happen, as do various plot-twists before the villains are unmasked and arrested.

Stylistically, it's written in a markedly whimsical style; the whole area is apparently populated by eccentrics, and the background harks back to the 1940s or 50s (if not earlier) even though this was first published in 1979 and is supposedly contemporary. It's probably not to everyone's taste - the writing borders on twee Americana, and can be cloyingly domestic at times (a bit like Charlaine Harris can be). I enjoy the writing; it's light and fluffy and doesn't require much in the way of mental effort.

Enjoyable, but probably not to most people's taste.

Substance: Peter Shandy and his new bride become embroiled in another run of mysteries at Balaclava College when happenstance turns into too many coincidences. Shandy actually does a bit of detection, but the Rube Goldberg plot of the perps is simply too preposterous.
Style: Airy persiflage and good-humor abound. ( )