I was working at the circulation desk a couple of weeks ago when a patron returned several books by Donna Andrews. I looked at the titles and got such a chuckle out of them that I decided it was time I read one of her books.
Donna Andrews writes cozy mysteries with the heroine Meg Langslow. All of these books have a bird in the title like “We’ll always have parrots”. Her first book, “Murder with Peacocks” won the Agatha, Anthony, Barry, and Romantic Times awards for best first novel and the Lefty award for the funniest mystery of 1999. Not bad, huh? After “Murder with Peacocks” was published Andrews purchased a copy of “Peterson’s Field Guide to Eastern Birds” and began writing her series of bird titled mysteries. She has won numerous awards with this series as well as a second series titled with a computer theme.
I read “Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos”. The book is set in Yorktown, Virginia during a Revolutionary War reenactment of the British surrender in 1781. Meg Langslow returns to her hometown for the craft fair. She is an amateur blacksmith and designs various crafts like swords and daggers out of wrought iron. She also made a dozen pink flamingos on consignment for a friend of her mothers. At the fair Meg hides the flamingos in a crate because she doesn’t want to become known as “the blacksmith who makes those cute wrought-iron flamingos.”
Meg’s future mother-in-law, who is in charge of the festival, has given Meg several other duties. She is to be on the outlook for any “anachronisms” such as cell phones, calculators, wristwatches or other modern devices, which will ruin the historical authenticity. All is going well until a salesman is discovered dead in her booth. Unfortunately, he is discovered with a dagger in his back that Meg made. Now, Meg must solve a murder along with her other duties.
Andrews provides plenty of chuckles. When Meg dons a gown with stays for the evening banquet, she says, “Not only did the neckline seems much lower…but every time I looked down, my breasts looked much closer than I was used to seeing them. I had to fight the irrational fear that if I stumbled they would fly up and smack me in the face.”
Meg’s doctor father mans the medical tent. Naturally like any 17th Century doctor, he has a number of leeches available for anyone who needs to be bled. As Meg passes his tent, she hears laughter coming from it and assumes he is entertaining small boys with “his troupe of performing leeches”. According to Meg’s brother, one of his favorite acts is playing Rogue Elephant, that “…involved Dad attaching the longest available leech to his nose and lurching around the room trumpeting like a wounded pachyderm.” Meg prefers not to investigate. She believes “…that no one from whom I had inherited DNA could be capable of doing such a thing.”
Of course, Meg catches the murderer, and additionally, gets many new orders for her wrought-iron pink flamingos, much to her chagrin. As with all cozies, the mystery plays second fiddle to the characters and odd ball situations. The latest Donna Andrews mystery is “Swan for the Money”. I encourage you to try one of her books. They are a “hoot”—“Owls well that ends well”.
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