Book Review: The Luck Runs Out (1979) by Charlotte MacLeod

In The Luck Runs Out, Canadian–American author Charlotte MacLeod gives readers a truly enjoyable read, with a different from the usual setting, eccentric, exaggerated characters, a pignapping (with plenty of other animals around-none harmed), plenty of literary references, witty writing but amidst all the fun also a quite solid murder mystery.

The book, second in a series, is set on the campus of the fictional Balaclava Agricultural College, where Peter Shandy is professor of Botany and also happens to solve crimes with his wife, Libarian Helen Marsh Shandy (whom he met in book 1 which I haven’t yet read). The annual competition of the Balaclava County Draft Horse Association is coming up and contestants are amidst preparations while the farrier, Martha Flackley ensures the horses are in top condition. But as the horse shoes at the stables are found turned upside down one day, it seems a portent that their luck is about to ‘run out’ and so it does with a flurry of troubles being unleashed. First Helen and Peter, out to buy a sterling dinner service, are briefly caught amidst a heist with Helen taken hostage; then not long after a dinner party they throw, Martha Flackley is found dead—murdered—in a mash feeder and Balaclava’s prize pig Belinda, all 800+ pounds of her has been pignapped with the culprits leaving an array of menacing messages from pork chops to a ham sandwich with a bite taken out of it. The police are there to investigate of course but college president Thorkjeld Svenson also deploys the entire student body in search of Belinda, letting them loose to scour the college surrounds. Suspects there are plenty, among whom is also a group of which Birgit Svenson, one of Throkjeld’s seven daughters is part—the Vigilante Vegetarians.

Meanwhile other more personal developments are also afoot with some mild matchmaking being done on campus as the rather repugnant housekeeper Lorene McSpee has taken over Prof Tim Ames’ home and life, Helen’s friend Iduna Bjorklund is there for a visit as she must seek gainful employment having lost her family fortune, and Birgit and her beau, the devastatingly handsome Hajlmar Olafssen have had a falling out but no clue as to the cause. Have those upside-down (or did I mean right-side up) horseshoes really turned the fortunes of Balaclava upside down?

The cover doesn’t quite capture the light-hearted flavour of the book though the praise on it does.

I loved this fun, crazy mystery all the way through and wasn’t quite sure what course things would take which meant I could enjoy the reveal as it came. But the mystery (and I will come to that) is just one of the elements of this book in which MacLeod also gives us a whole host of eccentric characters and situations, some pushed to the levels of almost ridiculous but with a restrained hand that they don’t go into caricature or spoof territory. We have Thorkjeld Svenson and his lovely wife Seiglinde with their seven daughters, of whom it is Birgit here that we are see most closely; Birgit’s boyfriend Hajlmar who may be handsome and talented but is also quite the klutz, even tripping over his own sheepdog mid-competition; Prof Ames who always forgets to turn on his hearing aid and whose home (now that his wife has passed on) has been all but taken over by the bleach spewing Lorene McSpee; Prof Stott devoted to Belinda; the attractive but substantial Iduna, skilled at the culinary arts and the Flackleys themselves, farriers to the college, among others, and who almost magically carry on their trade without the slightest break, one family member taking over from the other seamlessly (after a death) such that clients don’t even notice the change (nor, at least on Stott’s case, know much about them).

The writing is humorous and clever with plenty of literary allusions/references—Jane Eyre to Jonah; and with the 800-pound Belinda on the scene reminding one of a certain other fictional prize pig (across the pond), her creator is acknowledged too.  

While keeping the comedic element in top form all through the book, MacLeod doesn’t compromise on the mystery itself and there are various developments as the story progresses, all culminating in an outcome that I certainly didn’t work out even if some links might have stood out. There is also a little touch of drama in the final ‘showdown’ as it were to unmask the culprits but only in the denouement do we find out how everything connects up. I loved that there was an afterword in the form of ‘Junction Jottings’ from the ‘Balaclava County Weekly Fane and Pennon’, three separate issues, in fact—which tell us not only the outcome of the Draft Horse competition but various subsequent events.

This was so much fun to read and Ieft me wanting to explore more of the series as well as MacLeod’s other books.    

Avon Books, 1979; pp. 192; personal copy