Meg Langslow has returned to her hometown in Virginia to act as maid of honor in an unlikely string of three weddings: her best friend, her brother, and her mother are all tying the knot. Murders happen, and Meg’s father, a retired physician, enthusiastically works to solve the crime. Meg does her best to help; in fact, she has no choice as she is recruited by her father to do so. Most of the book consists of Meg being pulled in four different directions as Dr. Langslow and each of the three brides fight for her attention and her time.

Murder With Peacocks is one of the best cozy mysteries I’ve read in a while; the recurring characters are funny and complex, and I didn’t even come close to guessing the killer. Meg’s speaking style is on the nerdy side, but it seems to work within the context of the story. The only thing I can’t figure out is why a series featuring a blacksmith has 32 books with birds in the titles. Some of the titles are pretty funny though – like We’ll Always Have Parrots. Tell me that’s not funny.

The series is current; books 31 and 32 are due out this year. Donna Andrews publishes two books per year in general: one regular cozy and one holiday themed mystery, usually released in October of the same year.

I may start to work my way through this series as I continue the A to Z Mystery Tour; it will be interesting to watch as updates in technology are reflected in the stories, and I look forward to more diversity in upcoming titles. ( )

4,0 ( )

The first book in the Meg Langslow series introduces her, her quirky relatives, and her future husband.

Meg is back home in Virginia where she is spending the summer getting ready to be a bridesmaid in three separate weddings. First is the wedding of her best friend who is a flake who can't decide between including Native American rituals despite not being Native American or going with a costume epic with a Renaissance theme. Oh, and with the wedding just weeks away, she has yet to pick out her own wedding gown or her bridesmaid's gowns.

The second wedding is her younger brother Rob's to a woman no one in Meg's family likes and who just might be a murderer. The third wedding is her mother's. She's recently divorced Meg's father and taken up with a man named Jake who is a widower.

All three brides-to-be have dumped all the wedding planning on Meg's shoulders. Between finding peacocks to add ambience and convincing various brides that their ideas are impossible, Meg is also trying to solve a murder. Jake's former sister-in-law is found murdered at the bottom of a cliff. There are numerous suspects since she managed to offend just about everyone in her brief few days in town.

Meg is assisted in her investigation by her father, a retired doctor whose passion is mysteries, and the new man in town, Michael, who is running his mother's bridal shop for the summer. Despite the rumor that Michael is Gay, he keeps turning up in Meg's orbit which is disturbing to her because she finds him very attractive.

The story is filled with over-the-top characters not limited to a small dog that hates everyone and assorted peacocks. Meg is the voice of sanity and reason amid the chaos with Michael as her able assistant.

This was a great beginning to a long-running series which can be read in any order with enjoyment. I know; I've read numbers 7, 29, and 31 and have 32 on my Review stack. Bernadette Dunne did a great job with all the voices and with the humor. Meg's acceptance and love for all the quirky characters showed in Dunne's narration. ( )

This cozy mystery series features Meg Langslow, who has been tasked with planning too many tasks in the weddings of three people, including her mother and future sister-in-law. I really enjoy quirky cozy mysteries, and this one was certainly quirky, with an oddball cast of characters, and of course, birds, from ducks to the peacocks from the title. There was a large cast of characters that I found it a bit hard to keep up with at the start, but as the mystery progressed, I found several of the more prominent secondary characters growing on me and I suspect the cast would be easier to handle in future novels. The arrival of the peacocks from the title was absolutely hilarious. Meg and Michael stole every scene they were in. I’m definitely interested in reading on to book two.

Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader.
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Meg is helping plan three weddings in the same summer. Those of her best friend, her mother, and her brother. All weddings are happening in the same town so many of the people know each other. At one of the pre-wedding gatherings, one of the guests turns up dead. Meg’s father has always been interested in murder investigations, so he takes it upon himself to try to figure out what happened, along with Meg’s help at times. All the while, Meg is still trying to plan three weddings!

I listened to the audio and I’m going to rate it ok. The audio itself was fine, but there was a lot of wedding… and three bridezillas. I found some of the wedding traditions odd. I’m not sure why Meg was in charge of planning three weddings for other people; for a while, I thought maybe she was a wedding planner, but nope. There were some other wedding traditions that were different from what I know – do people actually open gifts ahead of time? (In this case, Meg opened the gifts and made a note of everything because apparently the bride and groom (to-be) were too busy. I couldn’t figure out why it needed to be done ahead of time, anyway.) Overall, it was ok. I won’t be continuing the series, however. ( )