The Balloon Man
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Long-lost relatives and priceless jewels turn a wedding upside down
For all the Kellings’ quirks, no other family in Boston is more adept at throwing a wedding. So when Max Bittersohn’s wife, Sarah Kelling, offers to organize his nephew’s nuptials, Max is smart enough to stay out of her way. But when the art-fraud investigator stumbles onto a family mystery, he is drawn into something far more serious than the question of who will catch the bouquet. Stolen years earlier, the priceless Kelling jewels were last seen in Amsterdam, so how did they end up among the wedding gifts? Max is trying to answer that question when a talkative burglar wallops him with a shovel in a failed attempt to rip off the rubies. Then, as the reception winds down, a hot-air balloon lands on the wedding tent, spilling out the Zickerys, a branch of the Kelling clan who prove even odder than the original strain. Family weddings are never easy, but for Max Bittersohn, this one could be murder.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this spritely addition (after Odd Job) to a spirited series, MacLeod, who also writes the Peter Shandy novels (Exit the Milkman), has Sarah Kelling attempt to orchestrate an elegant wedding on Boston's North Shore for the nephew of her husband, art detective Max Bittersohn. Anyone planning a wedding should expect problems, but Sarah gets more than her fair share. Max is perplexed when the Kellings' fabulous rubies, last spotted in Amsterdam, suddenly appear among the wedding gifts. As he searches the room to find clues regarding their unorthodox reappearance, he stumbles across a verbose, mendacious burglar who serves him a brutal whack across the legs and then escapes. Shortly thereafter, a hot-air balloon crash lands in the middle of the wedding tent, and the Zickerys, long-lost neighbors of the Kellings, stumble out. The next day, after being incapacitated by a smoke bomb, Max is stunned to learn that a dead body has been found under the remains of the tent. Amid the screwball chaos, Max and Sarah, hampered by their three-year-old son Davy ("the world's most intelligent child"), try to discover who the dead man was, how his body came to be on their property and whether he has anything to do with the rubies, the thief or the smoke bomb. When Davy goes missing and then Max is abducted, level-headed Sarah must stave off her zany Kelling relatives to get her loved ones back. In this delightful mystery, Max and Sarah make a strong claim to being the Nick and Nora Charles of the 1990s, urbane, witty and thoroughly appealing. Mystery Guild main selection.
