Mystery writer MacLeod dies at 82

LEWISTON – Award-winning mystery writer Charlotte MacLeod, whose specialty was the “cozy” mystery, died Friday in a Lewiston nursing home. She was 82.

MacLeod wrote more than 30 novels in which the protagonists were often amateur sleuths who stumbled upon their mysteries. Her books eschewed graphic violence, sex, gore and vulgar language.

“She wrote specifically for people who did not want blood and guts, at least not a whole lot of it anyway,” her sister, Alexandria Baxter of Richmond, said. “Everybody drank tea and ate molasses cookies. It was that kind of thing.”

MacLeod’s Peter Shandy series described the adventures of a college professor, and the Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn mysteries were about a couple from Boston’s Beacon Hill area. She also had a couple of series, written under the pen name Alisa Craig, which were set in her native Canada.

MacLeod was born in New Brunswick and moved to the Boston area as an infant with her family. She moved to Maine in 1985, living in Bowdoinham.

Baxter described her sister as a true lady, right down to her white gloves, hat and impeccable grammar. Highly disciplined, she usually began work at 6 a.m., writing through the morning and devoting the afternoon to rewriting.

She would start a new book only on a Sunday morning and she would stay in her bathrobe while writing to ward off any temptation to run out of the house for an errand or otherwise get distracted, said Baxter, who typed and proofread her sister’s manuscripts and served as her business manager.