Duck the Halls

August 26, 2013
The residents of Caerphilly, Va., must struggle to maintain their Christmas cheer in Andrews’s lighthearted 16th Meg Langslow mystery (after The Hen of the Baskervilles). Pranksters are creating some not-so-merry problems for police chief Henry Burke, volunteer fire chief Jim Featherstone, and the parishioners of the town’s churches. Some very unhappy skunks fill the choir loft of the New Life Baptist Church; a large snake puts in a surprise appearance at Trinity Episcopal’s Christmas concert; and the sanctuary of St. Byblig plays host to a flock of messy ducks. Meg’s organizational skills come in handy as she takes charge of coordinating revamped schedules for the many holiday activities that can’t take place in the affected churches. The stakes rise when another prank takes a life at Trinity. Andrews leavens the action with her trademark humor, including dueling Christmas dinners and an extravagant—and extravagantly funny—live nativity scene. Agent: Ellen Geiger, Frances Goldin Literary Agency.

October 1, 2013
To celebrate the most wonderful time of the year, Caerphilly, Va., goes to the birds. And snakes. And skunks. It all begins when some miscreant leaves a cage of skunks--sorry, a surfeit of skunks--in the choir loft of the New Life Baptist Church. Agitated to be abandoned in the run-up to Christmas, one of them sprays New Life caretaker Nelson Dandridge in the eye. Things get worse when decorative blacksmith Meg Langslow's grandfather, distinguished zoologist Montgomery Blake, is called in to rusticate the skunks and discovers in the process that his boa constrictor has gone missing, not to reappear until a strategic moment in the New Life Christmas concert, which has been relocated to Trinity Episcopal. Not to be left out, St. Byblig Church is the unwilling recipient of a flock of ducks who've settled in the sanctuary. What makes this rash of outrages against religious communities still more outrageous is that Caleb Shiffley and Ronnie Butler, the pranksters responsible for the skunks and the snake, insist that they had nothing to do with the ducks. Oh, and that fussbudget retired banker Barliman Vess has been murdered, maybe since he interrupted whoever was leaving the rabbits in the basement of Trinity Episcopal. Given her vast experience as an amateur sleuth (The Hen of the Baskervilles, 2013, etc.), it's a foregone conclusion that Meg will track down the killer--or at least be on hand when her mother tells him, "Take that, you rude man!" Not many felonies, clues or deductions, and rather too many pranks and Shiffley cousins who wander through the story with little motivation. There's charm enough here to get by with Meg's many fans, but newcomers will want to open other gifts in this waggish series first.

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October 15, 2013

In this 16th entry (after The Hen of the Baskervilles) of this avian-themed mystery series, someone is playing pranks on the local churches by leaving skunks, a snake, and then ducks locked in the buildings and wreaking havoc on the planned Christmas events. Meg Langslow is enlisted to find space for rehearsals and programs and reschedule everything, but when the pranks turn deadly, she also takes on the role of sleuth. VERDICT A fun and uncomplicated cozy mystery that will make you long to visit small-town Virginia for the Christmas holidays.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2013
As the Christmas season approaches, pranksters leave a cage full of skunks in the New Life Baptist Church, so now the church reeks of skunk, making it impossible to hold their popular holiday concert. The latest Meg Langslow novel finds the blacksmith/amateur sleuth drafted to find alternate locations for all the church's holiday events. During the concert, now at Trinity Episcopal, a missing boa constrictor slithers out of the garlands, and Meg must rework her schedule when hundreds of ducks are released in the local Catholic Church. When a persnickety, tightfisted member of Trinity Episcopal's vestry is found murdered after a fire in the basement of the church, Meg works to clear the pranksters, who are now murder suspects. In addition to the pranksters, suspects include New Life's bullying choir director, a Trinity Episcopal Church employee, and members of the large Shiffley clan. While solving the case, Meg works to plan a secret, quiet, traditional Christmas Eve with her husband and twin sons. Meg, as well as her quirky extended family, makes this humorous cozy a holiday treat.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)