Another enjoyable adventure with Meg Langslow. In this episode, Meg is in charge of the logistics for the Caerphilly UnFair, which is in danger of desAnother enjoyable adventure with Meg Langslow. In this episode, Meg is in charge of the logistics for the Caerphilly UnFair, which is in danger of destruction by theft and vandalism. A quilt has gone missing, a pumpkin has been smashed, and animals, including some heritage chickens, are disappearing from the fair grounds. The game is afoot--or possibly awing--and Meg is determined to get to the bottom of the shenanigans.
As always, I have issues with some of the cozy mystery tropes that Andrews employs. This is one of those series that I wish could content itself with being a mystery rather than a murder mystery. I'd eagerly read about the Curious Case of the Crushed Cucurbita, or the Question of the Disappearing Quilt, or the Chickens that Did Not Cluck in the Night-Time, or anything else that Andrews can dish out. But to me, murder always has a certain weight and tragedy that is a poor fit for Andrews' ebullient style.
Even so, these books are like candy, and the pros far outweigh the cons. I love Meg as a character. She is a ridiculously good-natured person, to the point that one of the series' ongoing jokes is how many people end up enlisting her aid, but her practicality and sense of humour make her appealing rather than saccharine.
Plus, this book involves a llama costume contest, including a dragon/Viking llama pair. Just saying....more
The story starts with an unknown prankster leaving a cage full of skunks in Book Reaction (not a full review)
I think this book may have jinxed me.
The story starts with an unknown prankster leaving a cage full of skunks in the Baptist church.
On two of the nights that I listened to the audiobook on the way home from work, I nearly ran right into a skunk. I am deathly afraid of skunks.
As with the rest of the book, the story is charming, with a boatload of wacky characters and a protagonist who is both sympathetic and humorous. I love visiting Donna Andrews' Caerphilly in much the way that I used to enjoy my visits to Lillian Jackson Braun's Moose County: I read the books for the characters' antics, not for the mystery.
Which is a good thing, as there's not much of a mystery to speak of. Andrews follows the Cozy Mystery Formula for detective fiction, which makes the crime very easy for the reader to solve. First, identify the Unpleasant Newcomers (not necessarily to the town, but to the cast). There will likely be three or four of them. One of them will be distinguished early on as the chief antagonist and someone that everyone, including the protagonist, wants to kill. This will be the murderee. The others will split into two logical groupings. One, the one with the superficial but breakable alibi, will be guilty of the murder. The other will initially be suspected, but will turn out to be involved in a different crime. The protagonist will surprise the villian in the act, the villain will tie her up and monologue, and another member of the cast will surprise them and save the day.
One of the reasons that I don't tend to dip into the cozy mystery genre much is that this particular formula troubles me. It creates a division between the comfortable and comedic characters and those whose lives are of so little worth that their death or misery can be cheerfully put aside as the characters go on with their lives. After all, that's why the genre is called "cozy."
But for all that, the Meg Lanslow series is so very charming and so much fun that even I can put aside my annoyance with cozies and join everyone else in treating murder as a minor inconvenience.
In this case, my favourite parts were Meg's sang-froid in dealing with the crazy circumstances that her family creates, such as a duck appearing in her bathtub. (She puts it in her brother's bathtub, and later, when she is faced with telling her sons about the duck's future as Christmas dinner, she presents it to her grandfather as a Christmas present that she didn't have time to wrap.)
Another enjoyable little jaunt into Meg Lanslow's Caerphilly, and as entertaining as always. My complaints against thBook Reaction (not a full review)
Another enjoyable little jaunt into Meg Lanslow's Caerphilly, and as entertaining as always. My complaints against the cozy formula still stand-- I was able to identify the villain right after the crime, and then had to wait for the rest of the book to catch up-- but the story was enjoyable nonetheless. In this particular adventure, Meg has been roped into organising a show house in which various decorators each decorate a room in their own particular style. Given that several of them are in high-strung artiste mode and Meg's mother is one of the set, hilarity promptly ensues. My favourite decorators were the quilt ladies, who bedecked absolutely everything in quilts.
This year, with Meg's mother busy decorating, Meg's mother-in-law has unilaterally taken over the Christmas dinner extravaganza. She keeps calling Meg at odd moments with context-free questions like, "Turkey or goose?" and "What's your family's gluten situation?"
I looked at the phone in dismay. "I had no idea we had a gluten situation," I said finally. "What kind of situation?" "I meant, are a lot of your family going gluten free, or is it safe to have rolls and a bread-based stuffing?" "I think it's safe to have rolls," I said. "As long as you don't force anyone to eat them at gunpoint."
I get a huge kick out of the title puns, but I've never really understood why all of the book titles have a bird theme. In this case, the nightingale is from the Hans Christian Andersen tale, which is woven nicely into the story itself.
Meg's twin boys still haven't given up on getting her a hamster for Christmas, but now they've started trying to talk Grandma into helping to fund a gift Xbox, which they're positive that Mommy will love....more
Faced with a long bike ride and nothing to listen to, I picked up an audiobook of Delivering Death from my library on a whim. I wasn’t disappointed. DFaced with a long bike ride and nothing to listen to, I picked up an audiobook of Delivering Death from my library on a whim. I wasn’t disappointed. Delivering Death is a fun little cozy with a likable protagonist and an engaging, if rather facile, plot.
For me, the most interesting part was Kramer's portrayal of TV journalism. The protagonist, Riley, is an investigative reporter for a television channel. As I don't tend to watch much TV, let alone news, I've never thought much of -- or about -- TV journalism, and the minimal opinions I have were probably shaped by the plethora of newspaper journalists who go on to write fiction. Newspaper journalists seem to be uniform in their scorn for their television counterparts; they tend to portray TV journalists as always going for facile visual retakes on the news that their hardworking counterparts unearthed. Perhaps surprisingly, I don't think this book really changed my opinions much. TV journalism does indeed seem to be as much about acting as it is about investigation. Riley spends a lot of time trying to find props and images to support her news rather than the facts of the news itself. At several points, the necessity of photogenic reporters is discussed, as well as the issue of Riley's "advancing" age (she's somewhere around 30, so obviously she's already passed the peak of her career.)
I also really enjoyed Riley's trips back to her hometown. Kramer does a wonderful job in capturing small town life, with the added bonus that I now know (a) how to pronounce "Hormel" correctly, and (b) that somewhere in its origins, Spam really does contain actual meat.
Less engaging to me were some of the secondary characters, including Riley's ex-flame, who dumped her because she had the temerity to kiss another man during a previous breakup. Can anyone say "creepy control freak"? Even so, I found his antics in the ending rather amusing.
Overall, I definitely enjoyed the book and will be on the lookout for more of the series.
~4.5 Meg Langslow is trapped a situation that could make even the most dauntless detective quail: she has somehow ended up as the wedding planner/maid ~4.5 Meg Langslow is trapped a situation that could make even the most dauntless detective quail: she has somehow ended up as the wedding planner/maid of honor for not one, not two, but three Bridezillas. All of the weddings will take place within a span of two weeks, and the persnickety brides-to-be are forcing her to organize everything from hoopskirted bridesmaid dresses to Native American herbal marriage rites to ornamental peacocks for the lawn (as just one of “those little details that really make an occasion”). Since all the weddings are taking place in her old hometown, Meg is forced to go back to a place where her quirky relatives rule the roost and “neighborly” is considered a synonym for “nosy.” Yet even her darkest forebodings fail to predict just how eventful her summer is going to be. When one of the wedding guests dies under mysterious circumstances, Meg and her crazy family suddenly find themselves staving off a series of outlandish attacks from a dogged and rather peculiar killer.
Even though I’m more into hardboiled these days, Murder with Peacocks reminds me just how delightful a cozy mystery can be. Meg herself is a wonderful character, down-to-earth, practical, and unfailingly sarcastic. She is almost unbelievably patient with the onerous demands of her family, but manages to use their selfishness to her advantage. Michael “What-a-Waste” (so called because the whole town believes that that the handsome and blue-eyed newcomer is gay) makes for a wonderful sidekick. He is equally patient and perhaps even more amused by the insanity of Meg’s relatives. There’s Dad, who grows poisonous plants as a way to meld his interests in mysteries, gardening, and medicine, and who mixes interesting sports like “gopher stomping” with a rather disturbing enthusiasm for danger and detection. Then there’s Spike, Michael’s mother’s tiny, fluffy, and utterly vicious dog:
“Mom rescued him from an animal shelter where she was doing some volunteer work.” “Oh, that’s so nice,” the bridesmaid said. “She is fond of remarking that he must have been mistreated,” Michael said, “and will mellow when he learns to expect food and kindness instead of ill treatment.” “Oh, then she hasn’t had him long,” I said. “Only seven years.”
As if that wasn’t enough, the entire town is obsessed with ensuring that despite the three weddings, Meg doesn’t end up as “never the bride”. Eileen, Meg’s most scatterbrained bride, when she isn’t airily proposing yet another insane and formidably work-intensive wedding idea, keeps attempting to set Meg up with her husband-to-be’s Neanderthal brother Barry, and won’t take no for an answer. Meg’s mother, one of the most demanding brides, refuses to accept that Meg is no longer interested in her previous boyfriend, no matter how stridently she protests:
“I wouldn’t get back together with him if he were the last human male on earth—which would be impossible anyway, because Jeffrey is not human, he is a vaguely humanoid reptile. Please delete Jeffrey from your memory banks. This is a recording.”
Even though I’m generally allergic to romance, I must admit that I quite enjoyed this one, possibly because of the complete dearth of alpha males. My issues with the book were more in line with my usual complaints against cozies: the callousness of the main characters and the weakness and implausibility of the mystery itself. Cozies always tend towards the lighthearted, and despite the rather impressive body count, this one is clearly intended to be particularly amusing and fluffy. As is traditional in cozies, the principal “murderee” is an utterly obnoxious individual and all the other victims are either equally nasty or straightforward caricatures so that the characters can go on with their lives without expending any sympathy for the victims. I see something something unpleasantly callous and shallow in this attitude, but it is precisely how Meg reacts. One of the reasons that I dropped out of the cozy subgenre is that I don’t believe a book where characters die should ever have an unmixedly happy ending. Like many other cozies, the book focuses more on characters and comedy than the quality of the mystery itself. I was a little disgruntled that certain implausibilities and plotholes interfered with my ability to guess the entire solution. Even so, I admit that the utter ridiculousness of the murders added to the humour of the story.
But even if the mystery itself was a little weak, I just didn't care. I was utterly charmed by the story, not least because of the crazy cast of characters. Meg’s entire family is basically batshit crazy. There are the inveterate nibblers who demolish the buffet before the event even begins. The scarily intense croquet players. The uncle who comes to every function wearing a gorilla suit:
“You mean there’s someone else wearing a gorilla suit? Is it contagious?”
Even the romance struck me as charming. I liked almost all of the characters, and I adored the absurd situations that the ever-put-upon Meg managed to find herself in. Plus, there were the antics of the featherweight streak of vicious fur, a.k.a. Spike the Dog. And just in case the absurdity isn’t quite complete, there are always the peacocks.
“I was finally drifting off to sleep when I heard an unearthly shriek. I started upright in panic before realizing that it was the same damned unearthly shriek we’d been hearing repeatedly for the past several days. “Damn those peacocks,” I muttered.“
Excerpted from my review on BookLikes, which may contain additional quotes and spoilers that I was too lazy to copy over....more
There are two things that put Sound and the Furry into my Five Stars for Being So Good At What It Set Out To Be category. (1) In terms of capturing thThere are two things that put Sound and the Furry into my Five Stars for Being So Good At What It Set Out To Be category. (1) In terms of capturing the canine mentality, it's the best hardboiled detective story written from a dog's point of view that I've ever read. (2) I'm pretty sure it's about the only hardboiled detective story written from a dog's point of view that I've ever read. ...rest of review is here
There are some mystery stories that you treat like a puzzle: you guess and deduct and try to figure out who the criminal and motive a**edited 01/27/14
There are some mystery stories that you treat like a puzzle: you guess and deduct and try to figure out who the criminal and motive and method are. And when you get to the end, you either feel incredibly smug or quite foolish, because it all seems obvious in retrospect. And then there are others where it just doesn't matter, because the mystery is just the framing for the story.
Simon Brett's books fall into the latter case. All of the Fethering books that I have read follow precisely the same pattern: the two main characters poke around, they don't end up figuring out who the villain is, one stupidly steps into the villain's hands and is captured and subjected to monologuing, and the other comes to the rescue. But you know what? I don't care, because the books are just too much fun.
This was my first J.A. Jance book. I also plan for it to be my last.
Despite my low rating, I have no violent outrage; it just irrita**edited 01/30/14
This was my first J.A. Jance book. I also plan for it to be my last.
Despite my low rating, I have no violent outrage; it just irritated me in a multitude of different ways. This was mainly due to my own personal outlook: this book definitely has a bad case of Did Not Do the Research and I tend to be very quickly exasperated by incorrect real-world details and inconsistencies. I also found the protagonist to be self-righteous, unlikeable, and egocentric. The author attempts to make various political statements about issues like ageism, domestic abuse, and gun control, and there is something rather impressive here: in several cases, I considered that the strawman won the debate.
Reader beware: this book made me angry. I am not a kind reviewer when I am angry. This may indeed be a good book, but it really, real**edited 02/01/14
Reader beware: this book made me angry. I am not a kind reviewer when I am angry. This may indeed be a good book, but it really, really pushed some of my buttons and I am currently unapologetic for the forthcoming tirade.
Death without Tenure is, as one might expect from the title, a murder mystery that takes place in academia with a professorial protagonist. Karen is a professor of English in a New England liberal arts college. She is currently fighting against a fellow professor, the Native American Joe Lone Wolf, for tenure. For some odd and improbable reason, this insane school decided to give tenure to only one of the two. (That's not how tenure works, folks.) Even more improbably, Joe Lone Wolf was somehow hired with no publications, no finished PhD, and no qualifications. He hasn't attended a conference for six years, no one has even checked on what he is teaching, and he isn't producing academic work. But despite this, the (insane) school decides to put him up for tenure because of affirmative action. People, this isn't how the system works. There is no way in the deep abysses of Hell that any professor could get away with the above. The system is also not so corrupt that ethnicity trumps everything else.
Well, of course, Joe gets murdered, and our protagonist is a primary suspect. We have some ridiculously improbable police interrogation and even more ridiculous and offensive characterization of Native Americans and other ethnicities. The book finally terminates with the obvious suspect and an improbable methodology.
As a relatively engaging, light, and not particularly enthralling murder mystery, this is fine. I've read plenty of books that were more poorly written. So why all the ire?
As soon as I saw the ridiculously attractive cover-art and intruiging title, I couldn't wait to tear into the story. To my disappoint**edited 12/30/13
As soon as I saw the ridiculously attractive cover-art and intruiging title, I couldn't wait to tear into the story. To my disappointment, I found I really shouldn't have judged this one by its cover.
The story takes place in England in the late Georgian period--about twenty or thirty years before Jane Austen's time. The main character, a surgeon from Philadelphia, is brought into the case of a suspicious death by the beautiful Lady Lydia. Graphic death scenes, a shallow and improbable InstaLove romance, and generalized "historical atmosphere" follow.
Call me crazy, but one thing I tend to expect of historical novels is some level of historical accuracy. Harris clearly did some amount of research for this book, but in my opinion, she just didn't do enough.
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