The writer Charlotte MacLeod Matilda was born on 12 January 1922 in Bath in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. The following year, her parents emigrated to the U.S. and so Charlotte MacLeod grew up in Charlotte in Massachusetts. After graduating from the Art Institute of Boston, she worked as a librarian and copywriter.

Since the mid-60s of the 20th century she wrote detective novels for teens and in 1978 she gave birth to her first detective novel for adults. Rest You Merry was the prelude to her successful Balaclava series. The witty and at times even seemingly comedic detective stories are sometimes not quite right and come entirely without violence and sex. Incidentally Charlotte MacLeod joined the Balaclava series several times briefly as Catriona MacBogle.

Professor Peter Shandy is a professor of botany and crops at Balaclava Agricultural College at Balaclava Junction in Balaclava County near Boston. Professor Shandy always ends up in situations where he must solve a murder because the police overlooks small but important clues.

In addition to the very successful Balaclava series with Professor Shandy and his wife, Helen, Charlotte MacLeod has also written the very successful series with the Boston specialist in tracking down stolen art private investigator, Max Bittersohn and his wife, Sarah Kelling Bittersohn.

Charlotte MacLeod chose the surroundings of the two series, because she knows them well. Since she grew up in Massachusetts and studied in Boston, she knows the region and its people very well. Through her ??work as a librarian, she knows the college life and so it is not surprising that her descriptions of college, faculty and students are very consistent.

The stories about detective Bittersohn his wife play in Boston’s high class and are just as fun and crazy as those featuring Peter Shandy.

According to the well-known and much too soon deceased crime novelist William L. DeAndrea, Charlotte MacLeod is in the United States the savior and the renaissance of the classic detective novel. In addition to her career as a writer, Charlotte MacLeod was a founding member of the international network of Sisters in Crime. This association had set itself the goal of promoting thrillers written by women. Another founding member was the writer Sara Paretsky, whose novels are centred on private investigator V,I. Warshawski.

Charlotte MacLeodwas awarded the Nero Wolfe Award in 1987 for the Balaclava novel The Corpse in Oozak's Pond. In addition, this novel was also nominated for the Edgar Allen Poe Award. In 1998, Charlotte MacLeod was honoured by Malice Domestic for her life's work.

Since Charlotte MacLeod was suffering from Alzheimer's, she retired from writing any more novels. The author died on January 14^th 2005 at the age of 82 years in a nursing home in Lewiston in the state of Maine.

Books from the Balaclava Series

Rest You Merry (1979)

The Luck Runs Out (1981)

Wrack and Rune (1982)

Something the Cat Dragged In (1984)

The Curse of the Giant Hogweed (1985)

The Corpse in Oozak's Pond (1987)

Vane Pursuit (1989)

An Owl Too Many (1991)

Something in the Water (1994)

Exit the Milkman (1996)

Books from the Boston Series

The Family Vault (1980)

The Withdrawing Room (1981)

The Palace Guard (1982)

The Bilbao Looking Glass (1983)

The Convivial Codfish (1984)

The Plain Old Man (1985)

The Recycled Citizen (1988)

The Silver Ghost (1988)

The Gladstone Bag (1989)

The Resurrection Man (1992)

The Odd Job (1995)

The Balloon Man (1998)