The Grub-and-Stakers House a Haunt
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3.8 • 9 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A widowed gardener meets a ghost from frontier times who’s out for revenge: “The screwball mystery is Charlotte MacLeod’s cup of tea” (Chicago Tribune).
Zilla Trott is pouring her cat some chamomile tea when the drifter appears in her kitchen. He is grubby and crude—not at all the kind of person you’d usually find in the pleasant town of Lobelia Falls—but something about him intrigues the aging widow. Perhaps it’s his rugged good looks, or the way he seems to come from another time and place. Or perhaps it’s the fact that he’s been dead for nearly a century. When Lobelia Falls was in its rough-and-tumble frontier infancy, Hiram Jellyby was the best mule driver the town had ever seen, until an argument over a hidden cache of gold left him bleeding to death in a back alley. He returns in spectral form to secure a proper burial, and finds that in modern-day Lobelia Falls, no one knows more about turning the soil than Zilla Trott’s gardening buddies—all members of Dittany Monk’s fearless Grub-and-Stake Gardening and Roving Club.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Silly from beginning to end, this latest in the series, following The Grub-and-Stakers Spin a Yarn, will strain the patience of readers whose sensibility doesn't match that of the pseudonymous author, who is really the prolific Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Charlotte McLeod. A lighthearted mood is created with a heavy hand as widow and heroine Mrs. Zilla Trott joins up with other members of the Grub-and-Stakers Gardening and Roving Club of Lobelia Falls, Ont., to hunt for the bones and buried gold of murdered muleskinner Hiram Jellyby. Also involved are Arethusa Monk, the author of roguish Regency romances, and Pollicott James, a specialist in dowsing. Arch and lacking in wit throughout, this tale is unlikely to engage the interest of fans of McLeod's other series starring Madoc Rhys, Peter Shandy and Sarah Kelling.
