‘Balloon Man’ a whimsical whirl> Book is 12th in mystery series by Maine author Charlotte MacLeod

THE BALLOON MAN, by Charlotte MacLeod, Mysterious Press, 280 pages, $23.

Here’s a whimsical whirl that dances around the lifestyles of the “idle rich,” as your New England great-grandmother might have used the term.

Mainer Charlotte MacLeod has written the 12th in her series of mysteries that entangle husband-and-wife team Max Bittersohn and Sarah Kelling. She is a prolific writer with a delightful penchant for characterization — sometimes really wild characterization — tumbling through thin plots.

In this latest escapade laid in the North Shore country outside of Boston, Bittersohn and Kelling are in the middle of holding a wedding, tent and all, on their seashore estate. In the midst of the wedding, long-lost Kelling jewelry turns up on the bride’s gift table. The Kelling necklace, which should have gone to Sarah, was deliberately given away by her ex-mother-in-law many years before.

That’s not all that happens at the wedding — Max discovers a corpse that jumps up, clouts him and disappears; then a hot-air balloon lands on top of the wedding tent (after the celebration), and their odd neighbors, the Zickery twins, long gone, suddenly turn up.

While such weird events continue, it is the outrageous characters who populate this humorous novel that add such panache to the plot. Max and Sarah are the central characters, but then there is Uncle Jem, Jeremy Kelling and his manservant, Egbert. Jem, “former Exalted Chowderhead of the Comrades of the Convivial Codfish, was one of Sarah’s favorite relatives,” the author informs us. He likes his martinis and makes a perfectly stout example of the stereotypical useless but charming elder of many families.

Mix in Cousin Brooks and his wife, Theonia, a certified psychic, and assorted other hangers-on and the plot becomes a bouillabaisse. Theonia, for example, “was the very model of an upper-crust Beacon Hill matron; but she could switch in a wink to a shuffling old woman wearing holey sneakers and carrying a worn-out shopping bag crammed with salvage out of the city’s trash bins.” Brooks, on the other hand, “was a trim, sprightly man only 5 1/2 feet tall, with the bright eyes of a chipmunk and the inquiring mind of an investigative reporter. A man of many talents, he was particularly authoritative on the subject of the crested grebe.”

The author obviously delights in her characterizations as she drops in spear-carriers like Bradley Rovedock, or Miffy Tergoyne, “Alice Beaxitt and her corrosive tongue” and the Larringtons.

Max is a sort of art recovery specialist, and it seems every member of his extended family is involved with him in this business. So he sets out to find who dropped the unwanted jewels back in the family.

Events overtake him — another body (this one is really a corpse) is found under the balloon basket; a monstrous smoke bomb drops on Max; and a fancy antique car is stolen. The corpse is unidentified, and police rule the case a homicide.

Trying to track the parure — the jewelry — involves finding out who the corpse was, who flung the smoke bomb and why. Ah, what is the lovely phrase — “the plot thickens”? It does so quickly as an attempted kidnapping and another murder crop up, the wedding burglar is discovered in Jem’s Boston digs, and Max disappears even as psychic Theonia warns that he is in danger.

The plot is carried along with extensive dialogue that is witty and revealing, full of banter. That is what sets this prolific author apart from her mystery contemporaries. She also has another mystery series going that involves detective Professor Peter Shandy, described by some as an American Hercule Poirot. And she writes pseudonymously as Alisa Craig in another series laid in her native Canada.

It isn’t the plots that keep readers buying her books, but the polished charm and humor of her writing, the delight in depicting some of the zaniest characters of the mystery genre. The combination makes for superb light reading.

Bill Roach is a free-lance writer with Maine roots who now lives in Florida.